Moments of Grace - Season Four, Act Two: A Glass Darkly
by Parlanchina
Summary: With the sweets, come the sour. SSA Grace Pearce and Dr Spencer Reid have picked a particularly fraught time to embark upon a new phase in their relationship. With SA Jennifer Jareau expecting a baby and murderers to catch, can they keep it together while the past keeps catching up with the BAU team? AU Complete
1. Cinnamon and Sugar

**Essential Listening: In Love With a Boy, by Kaya Stewart**

 **0o0**

The sun was shining on the eclectic little market in a leafy corner of Stafford, Virginia. It was busy, but not uncomfortably so. They had waited until long after lunch to visit today, because the market had held a children's event in the morning, and neither of them had particularly wanted to be caught up in that kind of chaos on their day off. Not this week.

SSA Grace Pearce ran her eyes over the spines of the books on offer at the second hand stall, exchanging pleasantries about the warm weather with its owner, whom she saw every weekend when the Behavioural Analysis Unit was actually in Washington. She didn't always buy a book, but the guy was friendly, and he recognised a long-term customer when he met one. Really, both of them were waiting for Doctor Spencer Reid to choose a book, which could take some time – he had read most of them already.

One of the downsides of an eidetic memory and a twenty-thousand-words-a-minute reading speed.

She glanced at him, fondly. He was standing a few feet away, utterly lost in a crumbling, fabric bound book that might have been published at the turn of the last century, and had obviously had several previous, rather affectionate owners. As always when he was reading, Spencer was entirely detached from the world, a peaceful, focused expression on his face. She watched his eyes flicking back and forth across the page, his longish brown hair falling across his face, and wondered how she could have spent so long pretending that she didn't like him.

Lately, what had started as a strong friendship had developed into something decidedly more intimate, and while there was a part of the back of Grace's mind that thought this was a terrible idea, the rest of her couldn't care less.

He looked up then, and caught her watching him. Spencer quirked an eyebrow at her, a slow smile spreading across his face that made Grace's stomach do loops. Aware that she had been well and truly busted, she wandered away to a florist's stall, where she busied herself choosing flowers, pretending that the smile she was presently wearing had nothing at all to do with a particular young genius.

Since the rather fateful rainstorm a few weeks previously, they had been taking things slowly, and apart from one key difference, for all intents and purposes their behaviour hadn't changed. Their co-workers still thought they were endearingly close (and endearingly clueless), they still bickered over science-fiction, they still hung out most days outside work…

Tucking her flowers under her arm, Grace felt Spencer's hand close gently around her own.

"Hungry?" he asked, as they strolled on, Grace trying not to fall into the beat-walk that was the police-officer's automatic, measured step, and Spencer trying not to fall over anything.

"Yeah," she admitted. "I blame the churros stand, personally."

Spencer laughed and they changed direction. "Churros it is."

The trouble was, this new change in their relationship felt so comfortable and so right that it was easy to maintain the illusion that everything about it was straightforward. Working together at the BAU (where fraternisation wasn't exactly prohibited, just a little frowned upon), romantic entanglements could get very complicated, very fast. Still, for the moment things were only just beginning to blossom, and that was fine with Grace.

Simply knowing that the other felt the same was enough for them – for now.

And if the occasional qualm about what might happen if it didn't work out, or how they could continue to work together if it did, or the ghosts of past experience had to be quashed, then Grace was happy to do it, as long as she got to remain in this blissful, daydream world of sunshine and warmth.

Walking back to Spencer's apartment, they paused on a corner and he stole a churro out of her packet, and she kissed the cinnamon and sugar right off his lips.


	2. The Instincts

**Essential listening: Instinct, by Crowded House**

 **0o0**

Spencer was fast asleep.

Ordinarily, this wouldn't be a problem on the jet, but they were heading _to_ a case, rather than back from one – and they were part way through their case review. He had got up out of his seat when the seatbelt light had gone off, settled on the end of the bench seat while the rest of the team milled around making coffee and tea and slowly slumped back more and more.

Halfway through their review, the others had realised that their young genius was completely oblivious to the rest of the world and, deciding that he obviously needed the shut-eye, had been reasonably quiet for a couple of minutes.

Now though, it didn't look like he was going to wake up anytime soon, and while they were all still highly amused, more than one agent in the BAU jet was casting a slightly worried look to one or another of their colleagues.

They were such a caring little family, Grace reflected as she leaned on the bar beside SSA Derek Morgan, and with Spencer's history, it made sense that unusual behaviour might bring out mild anxiety for their friend. He was far less fragile than they sometimes imagined, however, and since Grace had spent most of the previous night at an all-night astronomy exhibition with him, she was considerably less concerned than the others.

She wouldn't mind catching forty-winks herself. Especially with this case.

Grace frowned down at her notes. Every case was hard, but cases with kids were worse – and with one little boy already dead and another abducted, it looked like this one would be a real bugger.

She looked up as SSA David Rossi gently shook their sleeping colleague awake.

"Reid," he said, a hand going to his shoulder. "Reid…"

Spencer seemed to startle awake; it took him a few moments to take in where he was and what was going on, but as soon as he grasped it he sat up and apologised. "Sorry," he said quickly. "I was dreaming."

"Yeah, no kidding," SSA Emily Prentiss commented, with a laugh.

Unusually, Spencer felt like sharing – which really told them how rattled he was by the dream, or how drowsy he still felt. "Urgh," he said, running a hand through his hair. "We found a six year old boy… he'd been abused and stabbed." He nodded at SA Jennifer Jareau. "Your baby was at the crime scene. I was trying – I was trying to get him outta there." He swallowed then, realising that everyone was, once again, staring at him, and looked down at the file he'd had on his lap when he fell asleep. "Sorry."

"It's okay…" said JJ, amused, one hand on her bump.

"You know Reid, simple dream analysis says if there's a baby in your dream, that baby's actually you," said Morgan.

"I don't believe in dream analysis," Spencer replied.

"I don't know, it makes sense," SSA Aaron Hotchner chimed in. "The case we're working on and the case in your dream both involve children. Maybe your subconscious is telling you, you wanna sit this one out."

"I don't," Spencer assured them, looking surprised.

"To be fair," Grace observed, "I've got a book of dream analysis at home that states that seeing celery in your dream is a sure sign that you're about to die."

Several people laughed as Rossi gave her a sardonic look that told her he knew that she was perfectly aware that they were discussing a different kind of dream analysis entirely.

"Maybe you're just stressed out about going home to Las Vegas," Emily suggested. "Did you tell your mom you're coming?"

Grace saw the moment Spencer's eyes slid to the left, trying to find a way out of answering and unwelcome question.

 _So, that's a 'no_ ', she thought.

"Why – aren't we discussing the case file?" he asked, a moment later, the picture of innocence.

Emily laughed again. "I don't know, maybe because someone fell asleep?" she suggested, and Spencer had the grace to chuckle along with the rest, nodding and looking down, admitting that she had a point.

"Alright, let's start from the beginning, one more time," said Hotch, getting them back on track.

"This is Ethan Hayes." JJ passed a picture of a young boy to Emily. "He was five. Two weeks ago he was abducted out of his own front yard."

"Where were his parents?" Spencer asked.

"His mom just ran inside to grab her purse, when she came back he was gone," J explained. "She wasn't away for more than a minute or two. Police found his body exactly one week later in the desert."

There was a moment of silence as they looked at the picture of Ethan. He was small and dark haired, and obviously really happy. What an absolute waste.

"Uh, he was in a new change of clothes, his nails were clipped, his hair was combed," JJ told them.

"That's a lot of remorse," Rossi reflected.

"No sign of sexual assault," Hotch pointed out. "Medical report suggests he was smothered. The unsub could see this death as merciful," he added, looking up.

"Mmm," Grace pondered, "but typically mercy killers don't keep their victims so long."

This was all ground they had covered before. They had been about to move on to the second disappearance when they'd discovered their friend was asleep.

"Who's the new boy?" Emily asked.

"Oh, uh, Michael Bridges," said JJ.

There was a picture of him in the file, and Grace spent the next few moments carefully regulating her breathing while the media liaison handed it over. He was small and fair and freckled, and only a little older than the child who lived in her imagination.

She looked up as JJ continued, keeping her face a suitable, total blank and ignoring the swift, assessing glance Reid sent in her direction. There was no time for sentiment now; somebody else's baby needed her, it was as simple as that.

"Yesterday he set out to walk by himself to a friend's house a block away. He never showed up," JJ added.

"Are we sure these cases are even connected?" Spencer asked, and Grace felt his eyes leave her face to look at the others.

"The unsub called each of the families," said JJ.

"But no ransom demand?" Rossi queried.

JJ shook her head. "No, it was more like taunts. He's telling them it's their fault their child was taken."

"So he's getting off on torturing them rather than the children," Grace remarked. "That's a lot of power to hold over somebody."

"Okay, so we have an unsub who shows remorse and then projects his own guilt onto the parents," Morgan mused.

"And, if we're lucky," Hotch added, "six days to find a boy before he's killed."

Grace licked her lips. It was dangerous to assume that the unsub would stick to the behaviour displayed during the first crime. Although other aspects had remained the same, this offender was really only just beginning to discover their proclivities…

She met Spencer's gaze when they all started to head back to their seats for landing and gave him a small nod. She was okay.

They had a job to do.

0o0

 _Who speaks to the instincts, speaks to the deepest in mankind, and finds the readiest response._

 _Amos Bronson Alcott_

0o0

Hotch and JJ had headed to speak with and support the most recently abducted boy's family, Amy and Craig Bridges, while Emily and Rossi had gone out to the dumpsite, which left Morgan, Spencer and Grace to visit the morgue.

Grace steeled herself as they walked into the stronghold of ice and disinfectant.

 _This is just another case,_ she told herself. _Just another victim._

Following Morgan through the metal double doors, she brushed aside the familiar prickle of the lingering dead she felt in every morgue or mortuary. Others would need to deal with them when their time came, she was only here for one of them, and fortunately it seemed that his spirit was at peace – or at least elsewhere.

All she felt when the Medical Examiner opened the fridge and rolled out the small (far too small) body, swamped by the sheet that had been laid over him, was sadness. That little, huddled form had been someone's entire world, and now it was falling down around them.

She acknowledged the emotion and moved on. Ethan's death was dreadful and abhorrent, but there was another boy who needed their attention now, and perhaps he could be saved. Other people could wallow in grief for a life cut far too short, but in here, among the four professionals clustered around his tiny body, they didn't have that option.

"There was no bruising around his neck or face," said the Medical Examiner, as Morgan lifted the sheet to take a look. "I'm guessing he used a pillow."

Ethan looked particularly small on the cold, metal table.

"Was there any sign of a struggle?" Spencer asked, looked sadly down at the boy.

"No, but he would have been extremely weak," the Medical Examiner told them.

"Why's that?" Morgan asked.

The Medical Examiner paused. "This is where it gets weird," he explained. "This boy was noticeably thin, and both his stomach and intestines were completely empty."

"He's been starved?" Spencer checked, appalled.

"Seems that way," the Medical Examiner confirmed.

"There's your torture element," Grace observed. "There's nothing more powerful than restricting someone's food."

Morgan nodded. "Okay, so what's the weird part?"

"I wanted to determine if malnutrition played a part in his death, so I looked for evidence of starvation ketosis by analysing the vitreous humour – the squishy part of the eyeball," he added, for their benefit. "And I couldn't find any ketone bodies there."

"Meaning?"

"He was getting nutrients somehow," Spencer realised.

"Any sign of needle marks, IV?" Grace checked.

The Medical Examiner shook his head.

"Any idea what else it could be?" Spencer asked.

"Honestly, I have no idea," said the Medical Examiner, clearly baffled.

Unsettled, all three agents exchanged puzzled looks.

Walking out a few minutes later, Spencer allowed Morgan to move a few steps ahead. "Can you think of a way that could happen?" he asked, in a low voice.

"The nutrition?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"No," she said, after a moment's thought.

"Not even, uh –" He paused as a technician passed them and moved closer. "Not even something you might have heard about in – uh – your old team?"

Amused by his attempt at being inconspicuous and touched by his acceptance of all things gnomic, she shook her head. "Nope, sorry. Most of the things I came across were about harvesting energy in various forms, not putting it inside a human. At least," she qualified, frowning slightly. "Not as nutrition."

Spencer raised an eyebrow, intrigued. He looked as though he was about to question her further, but Morgan had obviously noticed that they were dawdling.

"What're you two chattin' about?"

"Nothing," said Spencer, far too quickly.

His face turning red, he sped up, leaving Grace a few paces behind, wondering how the man ever kept a secret in his whole life.

"Nothin', huh?" Morgan teased, a smirk on his face.

"Itching powder goes both ways, Morgan," she told him, nudging him in the ribs.

"Whatever you say."

0o0

"Not exactly a well preserved scene," Rossi observed sardonically.

He wasn't wrong, Emily reflected as they strode from the car to the dump site. It was a sad, lonely sort of area, just a piece of scrubland off the main stretch of the highway leading north out of Vegas. The area looked like it had been hit by a small, specific hurricane: the crime scene tape was broken and trampled, as was much of the nearby vegetation. The sand around the dump site proper was scuffed and disturbed by boot prints. It was a mess.

Luckily, most pertinent evidence had been recorded before the chaos had descended, but it had been very short-sighted to let people walk all over the thing while the investigation was still active, high-profile or not.

Emily scoffed. "It's the crime scene investigators," she said, with derision. "They all wanna play cop instead of just being scientists and they end up trampling on everything." She gestured at the compromised tape, as if that summed up the enormity of the problem.

"So, he suffocated the boy at another location, prepares the body, takes him out to the middle of nowhere and dumps him," Rossi summed up, as they walked on a few paces.

"Except there were no traces of the unsub's sweat on the boy's clothing," Emily pointed out.

"What are you getting at?" Rossi asked, frowning.

"Well, it's like a thousand degrees out here," Emily remarked. "If he carried the body, then he would have gotten traces of sweat on the clothes."

It was something that had bothered her all morning.

Rossi nodded. "So he wraps him in something."

Emily shook her head, coming to a natural halt beside the dumpsite. "No fibres."

The older agent considered this for a moment. "So he took the time to change the boy's clothing and groom him once he got here," Rossi guessed, looking around. His eyes lighted first on the busy nearby road, and then on the police car parked beside it. "If he took that much time, he'd have to do it at night."

"But you still run the risk of someone recalling your car once the body's found," Emily mused, her eyes on the road.

"Not if you didn't have to park it by the road," Rossi pointed out.

"Well, you'd wanna park a distance away from the dump site, just in case someone saw the car and came to see what you were up to," Emily allowed.

They walked on a little way, past the tattered remains of the tape and out along a sandy stretch of scrubland more sheltered from the road. Here, clear tyre tracks led off towards another turn off. This had to be it. Emily followed the tracks as far as the road exit and back while Rossi called it in. They would need forensics to take impressions.

Irritably, she hoped it wouldn't be the same unit that had made such a mess of the rest of the crime scene.

Of course, they could be wrong about it, but they'd need the tyre tracks checking out, either way.

"But now tell me this," Emily said, joining Rossi's close examination of the tyre treads. "If you _can_ drive out into the desert to dump a body, why not go in deeper, where you won't be seen from the road?"

Rossi thought for a moment. "Because he wanted to be able to drive by and see the body," he realised.

"That's why he groomed him," Emily added, following the train of thought to its logical conclusion. "It's like he was preparing him for a funeral."

Rossi got out his phone again. If there was CCTV along this stretch of highway then they would have him. If there wasn't – well, that type of behaviour was still pretty vital to the profile. It spoke to a sense of ownership or duty – and to powerful remorse.

If their unsub had brought Ethan out here as a form of funerary rite, then they would be feeling his absence from the dump site very keenly – and that gave them an opportunity to draw this bastard out.

0o0

Grace, Spencer and Morgan rolled up to the Bridges' residence in a pensive frame of mind. All the houses in the neighbourhood looked so ordinary; you never would have guessed the turmoil progressing inside at least one of them, or the ripples of it that would be, even now, running though the neighbouring homes. The street had been cleared of procedural vehicles, so as not to panic the unsub if they drove past, so the three of them parked their anonymous, federal Yuke around the corner before walking up the drive.

Grace felt the tension there before they even opened the door. Surprised, she looked up. The house was a fairly recent build – certainly only a few years old. There was unlikely to be any kind of spirit activity here, unless it had been built on something older. Spencer had told her earlier, looking over one of his famous geographical profiles that there had been nothing on that ground before except an old grocery store. There wasn't even a Native American settlement or burial ground.

Clearly, one of the people inside was bottling every negative emotion up, and that was flowing out of the building like a wave of hot air. Perhaps they were a little sensitive, too, and didn't know it. Generally, if someone had an awareness of that kind of thing they would have techniques at hand to prevent that kind of broadcasting.

She followed Morgan and Spencer into the neat, cosy living room that was currently full of law-enforcement and immediately honed in on the mother. The father was a ball of nervous energy, but she seemed calmer and more detached – at least on the surface.

 _The poor woman probably doesn't have the first idea of how to process this,_ Grace thought. _Neither did I._

Although Grace had had something of a heads up before they'd even got halfway up the drive, all three of them knew something was up as soon as they walked through the door: JJ, Hotch and the family were gathered in a tight knot around the mass of phone equipment that was necessary in this kind of situation. Michael's mother, Amy, was on the phone, presumably talking to the person who had abducted their child; his father, Craig, was standing a couple of feet back, bouncing up and down on the soles of his feet.

Hotch was obviously helping Amy Bridges along, coaching her from prepared sentences on a notepad. He looked up when they came in and raised a hand, urging them to be quiet.

"May I speak with Michael?" the frightened woman asked, keeping her voice calm and level.

The response, obviously altered using some kind of voice distortion boomed out of the speakers for the whole room to hear, like some kind of otherworldly admonishment. _"He doesn't want to talk to you. He knows what a bad mother you are. Your three minutes are up."_

The phone went dead and Amy Bridges, horrified, let her hand fall away from her face, the phone dropping onto the table. She looked about ready to drop herself. JJ took her arm, and Grace crossed the room in three strides.

"He's taunting you to feel powerful," Grace said to her quietly. "It's not true."

Amy looked up at her, a little startled, but a little less off-balance than before. Grace rubbed her arm, trying to will her to believe in herself – and to believe that she would see her son again.

"Garcia, anything?" Hotch asked, one eye on the Bridges as the tech' typed frantically away in her den.

" _It looks to be a disposable cell phone. I couldn't triangulate the call, but it did bounce off not one, but two towers,"_ she told them, at last.

"Meaning?" Hotch prompted, tensely.

" _I know he's mobile,"_ Garcia explained, unusually briskly, _"and I know he's moving within Las Vegas limits. He didn't travel outside the city."_

"It's just a start," Hotch assured Amy and Craig Bridges, as they exchanged an anxious, tense look. "Like I said, the more he talks, the more we'll learn about him."

 _It's another part of the jigsaw,_ Grace thought, meeting her boss's eyes.

JJ touched Amy's arm, turning her to face the boys. "Uh, these are agents Morgan, Reid and Pearce." The three named agents contrived to appear sober and polite. "Morgan and Reid will be here all night, just in case he calls back."

Amy Bridges looked suddenly as though the room was a little too full of people, probably at the thought of having to go through that again and being no closer to finding her boy. "I need to lie down," she said.

"Of course," Hotch assured her.

They watched her go, unsteadily numb, up the stairs.

JJ spoke gently to Craig Bridges, who was standing with his arms crossed, staring after her. "You should go with her."

"Yeah," he agreed, and followed his wife.

It looked like both of them were dealing with this pretty badly. But then what was a good way to deal with the abduction of your child? Grace wondered. There was no manual for that kind of loss. And if separate was what would get them through until they could be reunited, then that's how it would have to be.

The agents waited for him to leave the room – and go further out of earshot – before moving closer.

"What did you find out from the ME?" Hotch asked, in a soft voice.

"We think that he's starving them," Spencer replied quietly.

Hotch frowned. "But that doesn't fit with the care he takes with the bodies. Starvation would be a form of torture."

Spencer and Grace both nodded.

"There's no sexual assault," Morgan posited. "The torture could be a substitute for the sex act."

"And he's clearly getting off on interacting with the families," Grace pointed out.

"Pearce and I'll co-ordinate with Rossi and Prentiss," said Hotch, briskly. "We'll call you if there's anything new."

He headed for the door as JJ and Morgan took seats on the couch, ready to wait it out. She would be needed for a little while longer here, a vital prop for the Bridges' until nightfall.

"See you back at the hotel," Grace said to JJ, and went to leave.

Spencer, taking a moment to ensure that their friends weren't looking, pressed her hand. She glanced up to find a cryptic sort of expression in his warm, brown eyes. Whether it was because of her tension at the name of the missing boy, or his own anxiety over the case she wasn't sure, but she squeezed his fingers in return, before following her boss out of the door.


	3. Riptide

**Essential listening: Riptide, by Foy Vance**

 **0o0**

Grace moved slowly around the ground floor of the Bridges' clean, cosy house, trying to force the listlessness she felt out of her movements. They didn't need to see her agitation – particularly when it had nothing to do with their little boy.

Spencer had already scared the living daylights out of them with the nightmare he'd had during his and Morgan's vigil, and that had been bad enough. Grace glanced at JJ, who had told her that once she'd calmed down a bit, Amy Bridges had been quite understanding about it, and had snapped at her husband (who had been all for throwing Reid out on the spot) that everybody got nightmares. Even so, Grace suspected that someone else would be taking sleepover duties the following night – assuming they hadn't found Michael by then.

Pausing by a collection of photographs of him, she was once again struck by the similarities between this boy and the child she imagined her son would have grown up to be.

"Nothin' like bein' in the house when there's a missin' child is there?" Morgan asked, his perambulation of the living room having intersected with hers. "Feels like the poor kid's just walked out the door."

She 'hmmed' her agreement. "Except we saw first-hand what happened to the first one."

"Yeah…" He trailed off and she caught him giving her a sidelong glance. "I don't suppose Reid's talked to you?"

Grace looked up at him, then past him, to where JJ and Hotch were talking in low voices, across the room. "About what?" she asked, returning her attention to Morgan.

"About whatever's buggin' him about this one," he told her, and he too glanced at their colleagues to check they wouldn't overhear.

Grace frowned. "You're really worried about him, aren't you?"

Her friend nodded. "You know what he's like. He tries to keep things to himself and then he just explodes."

"So you're hoping to defuse him before he has the chance, this time," Grace guessed, smiling slightly.

"Somethin' like that," Morgan grinned. "So, has he talked to you?"

"No." Grace shook her head. "I think he wants to deal with it on his own," she added, though she was also beginning to think he might need a little extra help this time around.

Morgan frowned. "You two are pretty close," he mused. "If he's not even talkin' to you…"

"No closer than the two of you," Grace said, managing not to blush at the look of disbelief this elicited on the other agent's face. "You're practically his big brother. You do know he's an adult, right? He can take care of himself."

"I know," he said. "Don't mean we can't have his back though."

Grace's mouth slid up the side of her face. "True."

They turned when they heard the boards on the stairs creak. Amy Bridges came downstairs, dressed for the funeral. Grace's heart went out to her; the woman looked exhausted and hopeless. Her feet had barely left the bottom step when she spoke, looking to Hotch as the solid centre of the universe – as they all did.

"I can't do this," said Amy. "I'm sorry."

She turned to go back upstairs, but her husband was coming down the stairs just then and he stopped her. "What're you doing," he asked, forcing her to stay and engage with the room.

"I'm not going to the funeral," she told him.

Craig frowned. "We talked about this –"

"No, you talked – I listened," she replied, obviously wanting to escape back up the stairs.

 _This is a woman at the very end of her rope,_ Grace thought.

And her husband wasn't too far behind. "Uh – please," Craig appealed to the agents. "Tell her that this is our only chance."

Morgan and Hotch had been moving to intercept the Bridges, and now they stood a few feet away, a united front facing an extremely separate one.

"We feel like it's a viable plan," said Hotch carefully.

"You're asking us," Amy began, shakily, "to go to the funeral of a five year old boy." She was speaking slowly, struggling to keep her emotions in check. "We're going to watch them lower his body into the ground – and same man who killed him has our son."

Grace could see her point; JJ shifted uncomfortably beside her.

This was a hell of a lot to ask.

"If the man who took Michael is there, you presence might just startle him," said Morgan gently.

Hotch nodded. "We're looking for anything that might draw him out."

"I can't watch them bury a child, knowing that we're next," Amy told them desperately.

Hotch was watching her closely now, with guarded intensity. He didn't want to freak her out, but he could tell just as easily as Grace could that if Amy Bridges retreated now and they didn't bring back her son, she would regret it for the rest of her life. She might regret it even if they _did_ bring him home.

Morgan tried to encourage her further: "We feel like this plan has a reasonable chance of success."

"And what do you consider a reasonable chance I will ever see my son again?" Amy asked, her calm façade beginning to crack and fall apart. "Ten percent? Twenty?"

Craig was watching her too, pain and dislocation on his face. He obviously felt that she was being a little hysterical, but she wasn't. They both had the right to freak out about this.

"I can't give you numbers," said Morgan heavily.

She looked at JJ and Grace for a moment, before glaring back at Morgan. "You could."

Recognising a bad situation when he saw one, Hotch tried to tone things back a little, gently guiding people back to where they needed to be. "I understand if you can't do this," he said gently. For a moment Grace thought he would leave it at that, but he could read the tension in Amy Bridges much better than her husband could right now. "But if you can, we need to talk about who you're looking for."

He moved away and Amy didn't break away, or move upstairs. Numbly, she followed her husband to the sofa and sat as the four agents who had taken over their living room prepared themselves to give as gentle a profile as they could.

"Okay," said Morgan, settling on the table across from them. "We believe the man we're looking for is white. He's probably in his late twenties or thirties."

"Judging by the quality of the clothing he put Ethan Hayes in, we believe he comes from a middle-class background," Grace explained. "This is not someone who is going to be attending the funeral in a high-end or well-tailored suit, but they're unlikely to look out of place. They will be wearing black and looking fairly neat."

"He also might be paying a lot of attention to the two of you," Hotch added.

"Don't worry," Grace assured them. "Morgan, Hotchner, Prentiss, Rossi and Reid will be there with you. You're not going to be doing this alone."

"We'll also have other members of law enforcement present who will be watching to see if the focus is more on you than on the service itself," JJ told them.

"Are you sure he'll be there?" Amy asked, in a quiet voice.

"Certain aspects of his behaviour thus far lead us to believe that he's trying to separate his actions from himself," said Hotch, gently. "This is about remorse, and the funeral is vital to this guy's ritual, which is why we believe there's a good chance he'll be there today."

Morgan puts his jacket on. The parents were standing together now. Not totally united (that wouldn't happen until their boy was safe), but calmer and more together than they had been. This was something they could do to help, and that was a big thing for a family at a time like this.

"Okay," said Morgan, addressing them both. "If you sense someone lookin' at you, you need to tell us."

They nod.

"We're conditioned to feel fear," Morgan continued. "The little hairs on the back of your neck? They tell us the truth."

Hotch joined them. "JJ and Pearce will stay here. If the phone rings they'll say they're a family friend and that you're at a funeral."

JJ gave Amy an encouraging smile at the door. "You can do this."

Grace, glad as she always was that JJ was such a stable and steadying influence on both the victims' families and the rest of the team, slipped upstairs while they finished preparing the Bridges and walked slowly into the little boy's bedroom.

She had hitherto avoided it, being what it was (and her being who she was), but now, while there was a moment of quiet, she felt the need to face it.

The smell of the child hit her first –

It was everything she had imagined for _her_ Michael: books and toys and piles of dinosaurs, a light up globe on his desk, his artwork on the wall. Her fingers traced the shiny, thick paper of the height chart tacked to the wall. There were marks near the bottom, marks Michael must be so very proud of.

There was a teddy bear on his pillow, a gnarled, chewed, clearly adored thing that he must have had for most of his life so far. It looked forlorn, somehow, as if it was also feeling the absence of its owner.

Grace shook her head. She was letting her imagination get the better of her, projecting her own anxiety on the boy's things.

She looked out of the window to the back yard, with the slide and swing set that seemed almost obligatory for families with children these days, caught, for a moment, in a dream of what could have been.

Someone's feet on the stairs broke the spell and she straightened up, breathing deeply to clear the pain in her chest. She grimaced at Spencer when he walked through the door and he touched her back. There were too many people around to talk; too many things that needed doing.

She looked up at her him; there was a tightness to his eyes that hadn't been there for months. Morgan was right, there was something off with Spencer on this one. He was feeling it too keenly, and with the dreams…

Hearing more people moving downstairs, Grace let go of his arm and moved out into the corridor, leaving him to his own contemplation of the forlorn bedroom.

Outside, she took another steadying breath. As hard as it had been, she had faced it now. It was time to move on.

0o0

Spencer ran his eyes over Michael Bridges' stuff, trying to stop the images of everything that might presently be happening to him to prevent him from coming back to it.

He pressed his fingers to the part of his arm Grace had touched and wondered whether she could tell that this one had him as out of joint as it had her.

Part of it, he knew, was because of her. He wanted to protect her, of course, but given their line of work that was a desire he had already had to make peace with never being able to do. All any of the team could do for one another was try to soften the blow and be there for one another when they needed it, and while he intended to do just that, as and when there was time or space for them to recharge, it was unpleasant to watch someone else's pain. Particularly someone he cared about.

Then there was Michael.

Not Michael Bridges – though his absence was powerful enough. On the rare occasions that Grace did talk about the loss of her son, it was always in terms of where or how he might be now, if he was still with her. Those conversations were so personal and generally so intense that he had built up a vivid picture of Michael Pearce, and it matched so well with the little boy they were tasked with saving that it gave him pause.

It made him examine, once again, that part of himself that wanted to be a permanent part of Grace's life – and the part of him that wondered whether there was another universe where both she and her son had come to America, and where the three of them were all together.

There was so much darkness in the world.

The recurring dreams about the boy behind the drier weren't helping, either. The distinct increase in both frequency and intensity was really beginning to unnerve him. It made him question what he knew about himself. Could he trust his own mind, or was this the beginning of the inevitable fragmentation he'd watched tear his mother apart?

Spencer shivered.

Ordinarily, the first person he would turn to when his mind was in turmoil was Grace, but she had her own demons to deal with right now. He'd have to face whatever this new trouble was on his own.

He was still contemplating his dream and hoping it wouldn't prove to be prophetic when Morgan tapped on the doorframe behind him.

"Hey kid, we're almost ready to go," he said, leaning around the door.

"You know, they're right," Spencer mused darkly. "Odds are we'll catch the unsub when he dumps the body, or when he tries to… snatch another kid."

Morgan nodded, but came further inside the room. "I know the odds, Reid."

They all did.

Spencer sighed. Knowing it never made it any easier. "It's weird. Some things never go away." Restlessly, he walked over to a pile of toys in the corner of the bedroom. "When I was a kid –" He picked up a stegosaurus to demonstrate his point. "Every boy I knew had piles of dinosaur toys."

"Not you?" Morgan asked, guessing that this wasn't just about Michael Bridges.

Spencer shook his head, remembering. "I had books and notebooks. My mom… filled hundreds of them with poems by W. S. Merwin, songs by Bob Dylan. She liked it when I memorised them. She was convinced that they were watching us – and writing songs about our lives."

Morgan looked away, uncomfortable, but Spencer barely noticed, too caught up in his own train of thought.

"Basements are the first part of a house to be built, right?" he postulated, stubbornly ignoring the hint of desperation he heard in his own voice. "So, if you're having a reoccurring dream about a basement, it kinda speaks to the," he waved the dinosaur wildly, "the core fundamentals of who you are as a person."

Morgan raised an eyebrow at him. "I thought you didn't believe in dream analysis."

"Freud's been discredited, but Jung still has his merits," Spencer frowned, pausing to consider his next words. He could trust Morgan, though. He would tell him if he thought he was losing his mind – and he wouldn't tell everyone if he thought he wasn't. "My dream – that boy? I've been having – I've been having different versions of it since I was a little kid."

Morgan looked at him closely for a moment. "Hey, you know, nobody would think less of you if you took a little time off to get your head together."

Spencer rolled his eyes, thinking that really, it ought to be Grace who had that opportunity rather than him. Not that he could say it; not even Hotch knew about Michael.

"I just wanna find this boy," he told him, resolute.

0o0

Having the Bridges attend Ethan Hayes' funeral, while excruciating for all concerned, appeared to have paid off. About halfway through the service, everybody's internal alarm bells had started going off and they had become aware of a man in the front row, behind Ethan Hayes' parents, actually filming the boy's casket on his mobile phone. He had been so blatant about it that none of the agents had been able to believe that he was surprised to have been picked up on it.

Rossi and Prentiss had sidled up to him and quietly taken him away without disturbing any of the mourners. Pearce had been called in from the house and both Spencer and Morgan had left the funeral early. If this was their guy, they needed to know ASAP.

He was neatly dressed, but his suit wasn't as crisp or as sharp as it could have been, and from Garcia's initial perusal of the man's finances he seemed to be at the lower end of their estimation of a middle-class unsub. He had dark hair and a goatee, and Grace had remarked in an undertone that she had seldom seen someone working so hard to make themselves look like Ming the Merciless without a cape.

Detective Ashby, who was managing a bad situation with great skill and patience, had slipped into the room behind the one-way glass, joining Spencer and Grace, near the start of the interview, and Spencer was so tired that he thought if Ashby hadn't been there he would simply have buried his head in Grace's shoulder.

Before they'd caught this creep at the funeral, Spencer had seen a little boy – the same little boy from his dream. He didn't like to think he had… what? Imagined? Dreamed? Hallucinated? He frowned deeply, unable to decide what the vision had been. If Grace had been there at the time, he would have simply asked her if he'd seen a ghost, but she hadn't been, and there was rather too much going on to raise it. Whatever it had been, the accusatory, pleading tone of the child as he begged Spencer to help him had deeply unsettled him.

He badly needed an anchor today, and while he hadn't been able to say anything, Grace did appear to have noticed his distress. She was standing close to him – probably a little closer than colleagues ought to – and had stayed close all afternoon.

The gesture made his heart feel oddly comfortable inside his chest, like she had somehow managed to give him a tight hug without anyone noticing.

Beyond the glass, Prentiss and Rossi were beginning to up the intensity of the interview.

"Where were you on the days Ethan Hayes and Michael Bridges were abducted?" Prentiss asked.

"I was home," the man replied, licking his lips.

Rossi peered at him. "Don't you need to ask what days those were?"

The guy looked up at him, wearing an expression that suggested he thought he was far smarter than everyone in the station. "Am I under arrest?" he asked, playing the innocent.

"What do you think?" Ashby asked, quietly.

"I don't know." Spencer mused.

"This guy's getting awfully sweaty for someone who hasn't done anything wrong," Grace murmured. "Of course, that doesn't mean that what he's done wrong is child abduction and murder."

"No, you love kids!" Prentiss exclaimed. "You're just helping us with an investigation."

"So, you have – no right to search me?" the man asked, haltingly.

"Well, that's a leading sentence," Spencer remarked.

"Why? What would we find?" Rossi asked, leaning over the guy in a menacing sort of fashion.

He blinked, as if he'd suddenly realised that he'd made an error.

Prentiss got in his face. "Oh, do you like videotaping other things besides funerals?"

Loud and clear, Spencer could hear the disgust in her voice, and the anger. Hopefully the creep would pick up in it too and give them what they needed to know.

The door behind them opened, and all three of them looked up as Morgan came into the observation room. "How's it going?" he asked.

"We may have found a contender for creeper of the year," Grace offered.

"He's nervous," said Detective Ashby. "They're tryin to pin him down."

Spencer glanced at his friend. "What's that?" he asked, noticing the file Morgan was holding.

"You mind givin us a minute?" Morgan asked Ashby.

"No, sure."

He looked at Grace, too, who made noises about needing a cup of tea and followed the detective out of the room. As curious as he was about Morgan's unusual behaviour, he missed her presence immensely.

Puzzled, Reid frowned at his friend expectantly.

"I had one of the detectives pull it," Morgan explained. "The name Riley Jenkins mean anythin' to you?"

Spencer thought for a moment before answering, "No."

"Think," Morgan prompted. "Back to when you were a little boy."

Spencer's frown deepened. There was nothing he couldn't remember, and Morgan knew that. Why would his friend press for more? Slowly, groggily, something surfaced.

"I… had an imaginary friend named Riley when I was little," he said, at last.

Morgan showed him the file. "Riley Jenkins," he said, as Spencer absorbed the contents. "He was murdered right here in Las Vegas when he was six years old. My math says you woulda been about four at the time."

Spencer looked up, astonished. Looking at the file was giving him the strangest feeling, like the pieces of a memory reforming. Maybe this was the way memory worked for everyone else, he mused – dim and hard to reach.

"He was found in the basement of his own house, behind the drier," Morgan told him, and again it jarred something in Spencer's memory.

He could see it in his mind's eye – exactly the way he had seen it in the dream.

"He'd been sexually abused and stabbed."

Spencer took another look at the file, shocked. How could he have forgotten this? Usually, he could remember everything, but this…

It felt different. Had he been the one to find Riley's body?

A quick scan of the police report told him that his mother had had that dubious honour.

Had he known him, then? Had he buried the memories because losing a friend had been too traumatic for his four-year-old brain to cope with?

Distracted, he caught Rossi's sudden movement, standing up and looming over the creep from the funeral.

"Where can we find Michael Bridges?" Rossi demanded.

"You are trying to frame me," the man protested, rather ineffectually.

Rossi folded his arms. "You killed Ethan Hayes and you're holding Michael Bridges."

The man shook his head. "No."

"Well then, why were you videotaping a funeral?" Prentiss asked, exasperated. "Does death excite you, or..?"

He shook his head again, this time more emphatically.

"Oh... right, that's it," Prentiss insisted, getting in his face, making him uncomfortable. "Death gets you off!"

"I told you, I don't touch!"

"And that is not the admission of an innocent man," Morgan observed, but Spencer barely heard him, his attention torn between the file in his hands and the intensity of the interview beyond the glass.

"No. You just kill 'em and find new ways to watch 'em afterwards," Rossi posited.

"I am not sick!" the creep protested.

"I think you are," Prentiss cajoled, "and I think you desperately wanna tell us exactly how sick you really are, Walter, don't you? You want us to search your computer, and your home, because this is eating you up inside, and you know you need to be stopped!"

Something snapped inside the sweaty little man. "I never would have molested that boy!" he exclaimed, slamming his fist into the table.

In the interview room, everything ground to a sudden halt as the two agents shared a speaking look.

"Which boy?" Rossi queried.

"The one from the funeral."

They looked at the two-way glass and Spencer nodded, getting the message. He started dialling just as Ashby and Grace came back in. Creeper or not, this wasn't their guy. "He doesn't know the details to the murder," he said, as soon as Hotch picked up.

" _Are you sure?"_

"He assumes the boy was molested," Spencer told him.

The real killer would know – this guy? Spencer glared at him through the glass. He wanted the attention. That was all.


	4. Better Off Together

**Essential Listening: La Da Dee, by Cody Simpson**

0o0

The family, not unexpectedly, had not taken the news that the person they'd arrested at the funeral had nothing to do with their son's abduction particularly well. According to JJ there had been anger and recriminations, and Amy Bridges' quiet, disturbed question about just how many predators there were out there.

It was always hard when a profile fell through – but when a child was missing and the parents of that child had gone along with something they didn't want to do based on that profile, it was particularly bitter.

All this had been compounded when the unsub had rung the family again, taunting them and the FBI for taking the wrong guy away. Listening back to the recording with the rest of the team, Grace could well imagine why it would have rattled them enough for Amy Bridges to interrupt, even if it gave the unsub what they so obviously wanted.

Just as the recording finished, Craig and Amy Bridges came in from the kitchen, looking very tense indeed.

Hotch was on his feet before they'd come two steps into the room. "Would it be possible for us to work in private, for a while?"

Amy Bridges spoke quietly and with certainty. "He was at the funeral. I told you."

"He was at the funeral and you arrested the wrong man," Craig snapped, frustrated.

"I don't think it is a man," said Spencer, suddenly, reviewing the file. "Uh – did you hear the way she described the clothing? She said 'blue shoes, lime green Oxford'. A male wouldn't reference specific details like that."

Morgan frowned. "I think Reid's right. She talked about what the child wanted. How he slept, how she took care of him. She said 'I loved him'."

"A male unsub would have emphasized the competition, not the caregiving," Spencer continued. "He – would have talked about how he's smarter than the FBI, bragged about not being caught."

"Instead," Grace pondered, "he made it all about Mrs Bridges."

"You know, we could have been looking for both men and women," Amy pointed out, as her husband rolled his eyes and turned away.

"The statistics are overwhelming," Rossi told them. "Women abduct new-borns; men take children."

"There was no reason for us to think this was a female," Grace added.

Hotch pulled out his phone and called Garcia; JJ beckoned the Bridges closer. They needed to keep things moving now, not stall again. It didn't look like Craig or Amy was going to leave them alone any time soon, and it was their house, after all. They had shown a great deal of restraint and a fair amount of willingness to help so far, they might prove helpful now. If the family needed to stay, they could; they would probably feel better being a part of this. They joined the huddle around their dining table.

"Garcia?" Hotch asked.

" _Right here sir,"_ she said, coming through the speaker.

"Will you run the licence plates the police gave you and find any that might be registered to a woman?" Hotch asked.

" _That would be…"_ They heard the sound of her typing for a few seconds. _"Zero."_

"How's that possible?" Amy asked.

"The transcript almost reads like she's been institutionalised," Spencer reflected, sitting down.

"You mean, she's crazy," Craig clarified.

"Yeah, she described herself as being locked down, not arrested or put away," Spencer continued, ignoring (or perhaps oblivious to) his tone. "Plus, most mental facilities are very rigid about the amount of phone time they allow per day. I – I think her talking about only having three minutes isn't her rule to us, it's what she's been institutionalised to think of as normal."

"Garcia, can you get records of women released from mental institutions this past month?" Rossi asked. "She most likely has some trauma in her case file. Possibly the death of a child."

" _I'm sorry, but I can't do that,"_ Garcia told them, sounding pensive. _"To protect patient privilege there's no central database. I could hack each hospital individually, but then most diagnoses are kept separately by the doctors…"_

Spencer frowned. "I think I might have a way."

0o0

"Are you sure you want me along?" Grace asked, for the third time since they'd got in the Yuke.

"Yes, or I wouldn't have asked," Spencer told her. "I – I think my mom'll like you. She likes hearing about stuff that happens to the team in my letters, and…"

He trailed off. As soon as the idea of speaking to his mother's doctors had entered his head, the mad desire to introduce Grace to his mom had consumed him. It felt right – like something that just ought to happen. He just wasn't quite sure about how to put that into words without it sounding like he wanted his girlfriend and his mom to meet.

Which, he supposed, he did. He'd just never applied that label to the bizarre, troubling, wonderful, crazy thing he and Grace had.

"I just think you'd get along," he finished, feeling that words were wholly inadequate to express how certain he was.

Grace laughed. "So, no pressure, huh?"

He smiled slightly, and turned into the parking lot of the Bennington Sanatorium. It was a pleasant, older building that he'd liked the genteel, old-world look of when he'd been trying to find somewhere permanent where his mother could be cared for. The grounds were leafy and full of character. He had seen it as a place where his mom could heal.

"You okay?"

He looked at Grace, startled out of his reverie. It was always painful, coming here. Although he knew that this was the best place for his mom he couldn't help feeling a little like he'd failed her.

"Yeah, I just – I don't see her as much as I'd like."

He found Grace's hand on his leg and took it for a moment. Lacing his fingers with hers, he smiled. He loved the way they understood one another so completely – that sometimes neither of them had to speak, when the merest touch could communicate everything they needed to know.

The parking lot was of a kind that needed a ticket, and Spencer went and sorted that out. He found Grace leaning on the bonnet of the car when he came back, her eyes closed and raised to the unforgiving Nevada sun.

"Thanks for bringing me, Spencer," she said, while he stuck the ticket in the windscreen. "I needed to get out of the house."

Frowning slightly, he took a closer look at his friend (lover?). There were dark circles under her eyes, as though she, too, was having trouble sleeping. The case must have been getting to her more than he realised – and more than she was prepared to admit. He took her hand, rubbing his thumb over the delicate part of her wrist.

The contact brought her back to herself and she opened her eyes, surprised to find him so close. She raised an eyebrow, a playful smile growing on her face.

"Cases like these," he began, worrying his lip. "They bring stuff to the front of your mind that you thought you'd dealt with already."

Grace nodded. "Exactly that. I feel like I'm…" she sighed, suddenly looking truly exhausted. "I'm struggling. And I feel stupid about it because I'm a grown woman and an FBI agent, and I should just suck it up."

It summed up how he felt about the case so exactly that he laughed. "I – I don't think it works like that," he offered. "You've been through a lot, it's – it's going to knock you flat some days."

"Yeah, I just wish it would do it when I'm not at work," she chuckled, tiredly. "I know. We all have our battles, and no one can be strong all the time." She narrowed her eyes at him. "This case is getting to you, too."

She didn't ask, for which he was grateful, and he didn't elaborate. He nodded and rested his forehead against hers, closing his eyes. "I'm glad that you're here," he murmured, and was gratified to discover her arms slipping around his waist.

"Likewise." He felt her chuckle and say, "Consummate professionals, the both of us."

He pressed a kiss into her hair. "Totally."

Although he knew they ought to move and get the profile out to the director of Bennington, he felt more peaceful standing here with Grace in the hot parking lot than he had since before they'd left Washington.

Grace looked up, smiling more easily than he had seen in days, and reached up to tuck some of his unruly hair behind his ear. "Thank you," she said.

Spencer kissed her.

He hadn't meant to; he'd meant to try to say that there was nothing he wouldn't do for her, so there was no need to ever thank him. He'd meant to say that her presence alone made him feel lighter and more able to face the darker parts of their lives and work. He'd meant to say her willingness to meet his mom and the way she laughed even when she was sad did complicated things to his heart that he didn't think he'd ever felt before. He'd meant to tell her that he was pretty sure he'd fallen in love with her, and that feeling was never, ever going to go away. He'd even meant to thank her for being there for him in that quiet way she had, even when she was going through hell herself.

But he didn't know how to say any of that, so he kissed her instead.

She seemed to get the message, however, because her hand was around the back of his head, tangled in his hair, and she made no move to pull away at all. When they broke apart, he was delighted to see the slight flush in Grace's cheeks, particularly knowing that he had put it there.

Who would have ever thought he would be making out with a beautiful woman in a parking lot, while they technically bunked off work (even for five, much-needed minutes)? In his home-town, no less, where he'd had the shit kicked out of him for years by successive generations of kids who thought he was a dork. Right outside what he could (at a stretch) describe as his mom's house.

It felt amazing, but…

"I really hope my mom isn't watching this," he mumbled, as the thought occurred to him.

He met Grace's eyes and it immediately set them both to giggling. She kissed him one last time for good measure before they went inside.

Spencer waved at the receptionist – one he recognised from previous visits – and the man signed them in without preamble. He resisted the urge to straighten his shirt while they walked up the stairs.

"You look great, don't worry," said Grace, in an undertone.

He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering – as he often did – whether her intrinsic weirdness extended to telepathy. Deciding that he was probably pretty easy to read, he led the way to the recreation room on the second floor where his mom spent most of her time reading or writing.

Spencer spotted her the moment they got through the door, frowning down at a notebook, wearing that pink dressing gown a distant aunt had sent her years before and she'd loved ever since. As always, she looked incredibly fragile to him, lost in the fog of medication, carefully separated from the incredibly incisive part of her own mind that had the unfortunate habit of fragmenting from time to time.

Grace had followed his gaze. "Is that her?" she asked quietly.

"Yeah," said Spencer, trying to speak around the sudden constriction in his throat.

"There's no mistaking your relationship, she looks just like you," Grace remarked. "Same way you look when your head's full of information and you're turning it over. And she's beautiful."

"Yeah," said Spencer, smiling happily. "Yeah, she is."

The receptionist worked fast. Doctor Norman, the director of the hospital was already wandering over, in that strangely fast non-urgent perambulation he had developed over years of tending to people who didn't do well if you startled them. It allowed him to move with some speed, but arrive at a destination utterly unflappable and completely naturally, as if he'd simply strolled there. It was a skill that Spencer – who often fell over his own chair – had always kind of envied. He greeted him warmly.

"Doctor Reid, your mom didn't tell me you were in town," he said, offering his hand to shake.

"She doesn't know I'm here," said Spencer, pleased to see the man. "This is Agent Pearce, one of my colleagues."

"Hi," said Grace, with customary good cheer. She shook Doctor Norman's hand.

"We're working on a case and I actually thought you might be able to help us," said Spencer.

"Of course," said Doctor Norman, surprised.

"Have you heard anything about the recent child murder and second abduction?"

"Yes."

"We think the person responsible's a woman," Grace explained. "She would have been institutionalised, but we believe she may have been released within the last few weeks – just before the first abduction."

Doctor Norman nodded. "What can I do?"

"I'm assuming you have a good working relationship with the administrators of other hospitals?" Spencer asked.

Norman nodded again.

"I know no one can open their files, but if you wouldn't mind just merely giving them the profile, that would be of tremendous help," Spencer told him, handing over the file. "She's delusional, fuelled by grief, very well may have lost a child of her own – probably around the age of five."

"I'll see what I can do," said Norman, heading for the telephone in the little office at one corner of the floor.

Spencer took the opportunity to grab Grace's hand and pull her across the room, both excited and conflicted about the two most important people in his life meeting for the first time. A little anxious, he let go just before they rounded his mom's chair. She could be rather blunt, after all.

Sensing movement, she looked up to find him smiling down at her, and simply stared at him for a moment. Spencer took a seat on the table next to her.

"Spencer!" Diana said at last, pleased to see him. He watched her eyes slide over to Grace and frown.

"This is my friend Grace," said Spencer.

"Hi," said Grace, with a cheery wave.

"Hello," said Diana, slowly – warily.

"We – uh – work together, at the BAU," Spencer explained.

A little of the caution left Diana's face. "You mentioned her in your letters, but I thought I met all your colleagues last time?"

"Oh – uh – yeah. Um, Grace didn't work with us back then."

His mom seemed to accept this, so Grace said, "It's nice to meet you, Mrs Reid."

"And you – you're English?"

"Yes ma'am."

"I studied Old and Middle English literature."

"Yes, Spencer told me," said Grace, with genuine warmth. "My father did, too."

Diana smiled. "It's a wonderful subject."

"Yes ma'am, it is."

"What brought you out here?"

"It – was just time for a change of scene," said Grace, managing not to sound actually evasive. "I'm going to go see if Doctor Norman needs a hand with that profile – give you two a chance to catch up."

Spencer watched her go, a slight smile on his face – a smile that Diana Reid spotted immediately.

"You like that girl."

Spencer turned and stared at her. " _Mom!_ No, I –"

"Don't lie to your mother, Spencer," she said, giving him a pointed look.

"Uh… yeah, alrght," he admitted. "Kinda."

The look intensified somewhat.

"Okay, kind of a lot."

"And she likes you," said Diana, glancing at Grace, who was chatting with Doctor Norman across the room.

"I think she likes me too," Spencer said, horribly aware that he was blushing slightly.

"Well, of course she does, she'd be crazy not to," said his mom, simply. She turned back to Spencer and pointed a warning finger at him. "She hurts you, and she dies."

"Noted," said Spencer, fighting the urge to roll his eyes.

"What are you doing here?" Diana asked.

"I'm – I'm – uh – here for work," he told her. "We're investigating the murder and abduction of two five year old boys."

Diana sighed. "I don't like the idea of you working on things that are _so_ sad."

"I know," said Spencer, feeling awkward.

"You're so thin!"

Spencer looked down. She always said that. "I was gonna – come see you the second we solved the case," he said.

Diana frowned and gave him another penetrating look. "What else is goin' on in there?"

Feeling a little trapped, he attempted to look like he had no idea what she was talking about. "Nothing…"

"Don't lie to your mother, Spencer," she said again. "We know. We _feel_ things."

Spencer gulped.

0o0

Aaron watched the footage Garcia had extracted from the Walter-the-creep's phone hawkishly. He and JJ had jumped at the chance to give the family a second opportunity at identifying their child's abductor. At this point, anything they got would set them in better stead – particularly now that they knew their unsub was a woman.

"Try to remember the moment when you felt someone's eyes on you," he encouraged them, as gently as he could.

Amy Bridges visibly steeled herself, and JJ hit play.

"I don't know, I…" Amy began, uncertain.

"Yes you do," said JJ with such certainty that it refocused both Amy and Craig at once.

As good as JJ said Agent Todd was, they were going to be lost without her while she was on maternity leave.

"At one point you said, 'He's here'," Aaron reminded them as the video continued. "When was that?"

Suddenly, Amy Bridges pointed at the screen, indicating a slim, blonde woman in a black dress. There was really nothing remarkable about her at all. "That's her."

"Garcia?" Aaron asked. "The blonde in the middle, do you have her?"

" _Got her,"_ said Garcia.

"Isolate the image and run it through VICAP, see if we get a hit," Aaron instructed, hoping that they would.

" _On it."_


	5. Best We're Gonna Get

**Essential Listening: Shelter from the Storm, by Bob Dylan**

 **0o0**

Spencer watched his mom work, fondly. Sometimes he wished their lives could have been simpler, but the honest truth was that he'd rather have her for a mother than anyone else in the whole world. She was peaceful right now. It seemed a shame to have to disturb that, but disturb her he must if he was going to get any answers, even if it was simply for his peace of mind.

"Did I know a boy named Riley Jenkins?" he said at last.

"Riley Jenkins?" his mom asked, looking up to find him watching her expectantly. "Oh, he was a story you made up."

"No, no," said Spencer. "He was a real kid who was murdered when I was four years old."

"Oh, I think you're mistaken," said his mom, after a moment's thought.

Spencer looked down, discomfited. This kid Morgan had found _had_ to be the key to his dreams. He could feel it. "I've been – seeing things," he said.

His mother leaned closer, every fibre of her body suddenly taut with urgency. "Don't say that!" she hissed, checking over her shoulder to see if anyone was listening, but everyone was ignoring them. Even Grace and Doctor Norman were on the other side of the room, focussed on the phone.

"I've been having dreams about his death since I was very little, mom," Spencer told her.

"Well, you were always a reader," she said, dismissively. "It affected your dreams."

Spencer didn't believe her. He looked away for a moment before continuing, "I remember when – when I – I was four we – we went to a funeral –"

"Your uncle Daniel's maybe?"

"No," he said softly. Then: "I also remember we moved houses, and you and Dad argued about it, and you told Dad that I was in danger."

"Because you were," his mom insisted.

"Why – why did you think that?" Spencer asked, feeling this was important.

"I don't know, I just knew," she said. "I told you: a mother _knows_. We're animals, Spencer. We _feel_ things."

She stopped talking when Dr Norman came over with Grace and sat down, leaving Spencer speculating about the importance of instincts. He watched his mother's body language close off a little. Although she had a good relationship with Doctor Norman, he was still a doctor – and therefore to be treated with a reasonable amount of caution.

Feeling hopeful at Norman's return, Spencer met Grace's eyes over the director's shoulder, but she shook her head.

"I'm sorry," said Doctor Norman. "I spoke to the heads of nine different hospitals – there's no one who matches your description."

"Thank you for trying," said Spencer, disappointed.

"You know," the director said, thoughtfully. "If this person has an axis one condition, her release wouldn't be as important as whether she keeps to her medications."

"Right, thank you," said Spencer, taking this into account. "Again – thank you very much."

The doctor left to continue his duties; Grace took his place on the arm of the nearby chair. Diana immediately relaxed a little, which Spencer noted with private delight.

"I went off my medication when I was pregnant with you," said his mom, suddenly candid. She leaned towards Spencer, but didn't shut Grace out. "I spent every day in terror, but I made it, and it was beautiful. I had you."

Spencer looked up, meeting Grace's piercing blue eyes; they were clearly following the same train of thought.

"Oh God," Spencer whispered, the words tumbling out of his mouth.

"Surely not?" Grace murmured.

"What is it?" Diana asked, sensing the sudden change in mood.

"Women abduct new-borns," Spencer said. "Excuse me."

He got to his feet, thinking quickly and heading after Doctor Norman.

"I don't understand," said Diana.

Behind him, he heard Grace begin to explain: "It's – it's a sad fact of child abduction cases – men abduct children, women abduct new-borns, so if our unsub's a woman…"

"Doctor," Spencer began, catching up with the director. "Would it be possible for a woman to convince herself that a random five-year-old child's actually her own new-born?"

Norman thought about it. "If her psychosis is strong enough, and – again – if they stop taking their medication, absolutely."

"Thanks." Spencer let him go on with his duties, hurriedly pulling out his cell phone. "Hotch, hey – uh, I'm pretty sure I know why the medical examiner was so confused." He looks over at Grace. "I think she's breastfeeding them. Yeah. Okay. We'll head back to the car."

He strode over to his mom's chair and gave her a brisk, heartfelt hug. "We've gotta go – I – I'll come back when the case is done, I promise."

"Be safe." She glared at Grace. "You make sure he is."

Somewhat to Spencer's astonishment, Grace gave a brisk salute that was probably a result of London Metropolitan Police training. "Yes ma'am!"

"You drive," Spencer said, throwing Grace the keys as they ran down the stairs.

Although technically they were both cleared to drive at speed in emergencies, Grace was better at it – and it looked like they'd be getting their body armour on en-route to the suspect's house, and Spencer wasn't so good at multi-tasking. He called Hotch back while Grace pulled on her armour and got in the car.

"I've got you on speaker," he said, shoving his cell on the dashboard and slipping his own stab-vest over his head.

Garcia's voice came tinnily through the speaker, sounding particularly distorted given that she was on speaker at the Bridges' house, too. _"I got a hit off the woman in the video, I ran it through VICAP. It was Claire Bates. She was institutionalised over three years ago after assaulting a fellow secretary at a law firm – and by that I mean she bit off part of her ear."_

" _Do you have an address?"_ Rossi asked.

" _There's no last-known,"_ Garcia lamented.

"Try runnin' the license plate again," Morgan suggested.

There was silence for a moment as Garcia worked her magic; in the SUV, Grace and Spencer finished strapping their armour into place and made a start on ear and wrist pieces.

" _Got it!"_ Garcia cried. _"No, wait,"_ she amended, with immediate dismay. _"It's no good. It's registered to her father. He lived in Reno, but he died two years ago."_

" _Garcia, pull up birth records,"_ Prentiss proposed. _"If – if she's really breastfeeding then she must have just given birth."_

The two agents shared a look; Grace pulled her hair back out of the way and clipped her radio to her ear, ready to move as soon as the address came through.

" _Here we go,"_ said Garcia, with an air of triumph. _"Claire Bates gave birth to a son three weeks ago… oh."_ Her tone shifted immediately.

Hotch picked up on it at once. _"What is it Garcia?"_

" _Social services removed the baby from her care after a seven day evaluation,"_ their tech told them sadly.

" _That's why she holds the boys for seven days,"_ Rossi realised.

" _She's recreating the loss of her baby,"_ Morgan agreed.

" _But she's taking five-year-olds,"_ JJ argued.

" _Her psychosis must be projecting her baby onto any children she can get access to,"_ said Hotch.

"Particularly if she's stopped taking her meds," Grace added.

Prentiss called out, _"Garcia, can you read us the social services report?"_

" _While it is admirable that the patient stayed off her anti-psychotic medication for the health of her foetus, we strongly believe that due to a history of violent and irrational behaviour, there is a significant risk to the child if she is granted guardianship. Therefore the child shall be a ward of the state until such time a full time guardian can be established."_

Beside him, Grace tutted.

" _Is there an address?"_ Prentiss asked.

" _2509 Brookside Avenue,"_ Garcia read.

" _JJ will stay here with you, we'll call with any updates,"_ said Hotch. It sounded like they were already moving. _"Reid, Pearce –"_

Spencer got there first. "We'll meet you there!"

Grace kicked the car into drive and turned on the lights as Spencer did the final checks on his own armour and radio. Neither of them spoke. There was too much that might go wrong; too many unpleasant scenarios running through their mind. There was no telling what they might find when they got to the house – Bates might have kept Ethan Hayes for seven days, but when she'd called after the funeral she'd been so angry – she hadn't even stayed on the line for the full three minutes.

Anger was the number one reason that an unsub might unexpectedly alter their pattern.

Spencer grabbed the handle on the ceiling of the car as they rounded a corner, hoping she hadn't been angry enough to hurt Michael Bridges. If Doctor Norman was right about her level of psychosis, Bates would likely have windows of lucidity when she realised what she'd done – and that would make her particularly dangerous, particularly to herself, but also to them and to Michael.

They were about three blocks away when Hotch's voice crackled through the radio: _"She's going out the back!"_

Grace floored it.

" _Hotch, we got her!"_ Morgan shouted.

They screeched to a halt beside the other SUVs, coming to rest in a cloud of dust, and jumped out of the vehicle. Working together, they moved swiftly inside, keeping to cover, guns low but ready, one eye always on each others' back.

Spencer waited for Grace to clear the first room before moving inside. There was shouting outside, but it was distant and controlled; they needed to focus on their own environment before they could help the others.

The house seemed tired and worn, as though whomever was caring for it had had other things on her mind of late. They skirted along a long, dark corridor leading to what were probably bedrooms, checking each one as they went, until there was only one door left. It had a bolt fitted to the outside.

Spencer met Grace's eyes. They took up positions either side of the door, and – after the briefest of nods – Grace slid the bolt back and pushed open the door.

His heart beating hard and fast, Spencer checked his gun immediately. There, in the centre of the room, was Michael Bridges, staring up at them with wide-eyed hope.

"We've got Michael! We've got him!" Grace cried into her radio as the kid ran into Spencer's arms and threw his arms around his neck.

He picked him up, somewhat surprised at how heavy a small child could be. "I gotcha, I gotcha," he mumbled, rubbing Michael's back.

Grace led the way back to the lounge, keeping a weather eye on the door, just in case. "It's okay," said Spencer, and tried to put the boy down.

Michael, however, had other ideas. He buried his head in Spencer's shoulder and clung on, so he tried to adjust his weight instead. He sent an apologetic look at Grace, but she seemed to have predicted the situation anyway, guarding the entrance to the room in a way that was obviously calculated to prevent Michael getting too scared.

"It's okay Michael, your mom and dad will be here soon," Spencer said, but Michael just held onto him, as though he was the only safe place in the whole world.

" _Claire Bates is secure,"_ said Hotch, over the radio.

Grace relaxed immediately, putting her gun away and coming over to the two of them.

"You're safe now, love," she said, patting Michael's arm.

Finally, the scared little boy felt safe enough to speak. "I can go home now?" he asked, in a small voice.

"Of course you can, baby," said Grace, ruffling his hair. "You're going to take a ride to the hospital with your mum and dad, when they get here, and then you can go home."

"Tell you what," said Spencer, with what he hoped was an encouraging smile, "I'll bet the ambulance driver lets you sit up front and put the sirens on."

"Yeah?"

Grace nodded, and Michael relaxed a little more. Comforted, he started to squirm, so Spencer let him down and sat beside him on the couch.

"Are you really in the FBI?"

"Yeah," said Spencer, surprised.

"Cool."

Michael nestled against his side while the sounds of more emergency vehicles appearing increased a notch.

He felt Grace's hand brush his shoulder and looked up in time to see her regarding him fondly. "You're good at this," she murmured, before making her way out of the front door.

Spencer watched her go, sensing her slight discomfort at being around a small boy whose circumstances so closely resembled what she had imagined for her own.

 _You would have been brilliant at this,_ he thought. _Maybe one day you still will be._

0o0

Spencer stood alone, slightly to one side of the main thoroughfare between the front door of Claire Bates' lonely property and the emergency vehicles. The Nevada sun was beating down on his face – though it was late enough in the day to have taken some of its sting, and a slight breeze stirred the leaves of the stunted trees that had never truly adapted to life in the desert. It was almost peaceful; he was even feeling nostalgic enough to ignore the dust.

He watched Amy and Craig Bridges pull up, driven by JJ in one of the departmental Yukes. For a minute they scrambled around the site, desperate to see their son, before Hotch led him to the door and Michael sprinted over to them.

Buoyed up by a successful reunion, the rest of the team were chatting happily to the local officers, giving statements and preparing to wrap things up. Even Grace's tension was easing now that the little boy was safely back with his parents.

Really, he should have been celebrating along with the rest.

Spencer sighed, gazing out across the desert that had once been his backyard.

Riley Jenkins hadn't had a day like this, and his family had had to live with that pain for nearly two decades. Although his memory of the time was hazy, he thought they might even have been friends – how else could he so easily call his face and voice to mind?

Either his mind was playing tricks on him (not so easy to discount and quite terrifying if it proved true), or there was a little boy's family he could bring some closure to – not to mention a murderer to put behind bars. Who knew what awful things he might have done in the years since Riley Jenkins' death?

He bit his lip. Morgan was making a beeline for him, which meant he wasn't doing a very good job of hiding his discomfort.

"You know," said Morgan. "This is about as good a day as we're gonna get on this job."

Spencer nodded. "I know."

"And yet you're still thinkin' about a boy you're not even sure if you really knew."

It was difficult to talk about, even with Morgan. There were too many unknowns. "When I was four, my mother had a sense that I was in danger," he said, with a frown.

"Reid," Morgan said gently, "your mother wasn't well."

"I know facts about the case," Spencer argued.

"Reid, you got a photographic memory. Odds are you saw the story, he was just a kid like you, and it caught your imagination."

Spencer looked at his friend, reading him like a book. "I don't really think that you believe that."

Morgan smiled slightly, which told Spencer he was right about that, at least. "You wanna know what I really believe?" Morgan asked. "I believe you coulda done anything in this world with your life, and you chose to do this job. Your man Carl Jung says our unconscious is the key to our life's pursuits."

Spencer nodded slowly, wondering where this was going. "Yeah. Yeah."

"So, for whatever reason, that case was stuck in your brain all these years, and it not only led you to this career choice, but to the same city where your mother lives, and for us to have the opportunity to save this child," Morgan continued.

Feeling oddly comforted, Spencer nodded again – this time with more feeling. "Yeah," he said, the corner of his mouth turning upwards.

 _I guess it kinda did…_

"Like I said, this is about as good a day as we're gonna get," Morgan reiterated, clapping him on the shoulder. "Enjoy your moment."

"Uh, yeah," said Spencer, spotting Hotch coming back up from the ambulance where the Bridges' were checking over their son. "Hotch? Do you think it'd be possible to wait until tomorrow to return home?"

It would be good to spend some time with his mom – even if it was more of a flying visit.

To his relief, Hotch immediately nodded. He turned to Morgan: "Do you think you can find something to do in Vegas for the night?"

Morgan grinned.

0o0

 _I think the truly natural things are dreams, which nature can't touch with decay._

 _Bob Dylan_

0o0

This time, crossing the recreation room at Bennington felt a lot easier, now there wasn't an unsub to catch. He felt relaxed – and perhaps spending some time with his mother would make him feel renewed. The rest of the team had headed out for Thai food in one of Vegas' better restaurants, and Prentiss and Morgan had said something about showing Grace 'how the US partied'.

As much as he enjoyed their company, it was kind of a relief not to have to be a part of _that_.

His mom looked up as if she'd had prior knowledge of his arrival – but, of course, she hadn't. He'd only just spoken to Doctor Norman, after all.

"I'm proud of you, Spencer," she said, before either of them could speak.

"For what?" he asked, puzzled.

"For saving that boy."

Spencer stared at the perplexing woman that he called 'mother'. "How d'you know?"

"I told you," she said, simply. "A mother knows."

With a chuckle, he accepted that as possible, wondering how much of it could be put down to unconscious profiling. He jerked a thumb at Doctor Norman, who had come with him across the room. "Doctor Norman gave me permission to sleep on the couch in your room tonight, if – if it's alright with you."

Diana looked down for a moment and then assembled her features into a fierce glare, directed at Norman. "If anyone tries to keep him in here any longer, I'll scratch your eyes out."

Surprised, Spencer looked at the mild-mannered director, who nodded. "One night only." He left, clearly a little amused.

Having caused something of a stir, Diana carried on with her meal in a direct sort of way. "It helps if they think you're crazy," she told him, when they were alone. "They don't argue."

0o0

For the fifth time that week, Spencer opened the door to a dark basement and started cautiously down the stairs. With each step, the unease in his stomach increased, so he kept his gun and torch raised, sweeping every dark corner.

He was dimly aware that he was dreaming; the colours were wrong – too intense – and the basement seemed somehow larger than it ought to be, almost cavernous. The sound, too, wasn't working right. It seemed to be moving in and out of resolution, the way it sometimes did when his ears popped on the jet.

There was no way he could stop it, however, or change the outcome of the dream; all he could do was be carried along in it, right to Riley Jenkins' corpse.

Spencer reached the bottom of the basement stairs and flicked the torch over the back wall, where he knew the dryer was.

This time, there was no baby, no hoard of cockroaches (which had crawled all over him and woken him with a scream at the Bridges' house) – instead, there was a man.

His pulse quickened. Was this it? Was this the final piece of the puzzle?

He turned his torch on the man crouching behind the dryer; was he picking the boy up or putting him down? Even in the dream, instinct took over.

"FBI!" Spencer barked. "Put your hands in the air!"

The man stood up slowly, leaving the boy's corpse where it was, his hands in the air.

"Show me your face."

It seemed to take an hour for the man to turn around. Spencer could barely breathe, determined to remember every second of this. He needed the peace of mind – and he had to, for Riley. Finally, the man's face resolved in the beam of his torch.

It felt like an electric shock passed through his body. Spencer gulped.

"Dad?"


	6. Memoriam

**Essential listening: All My Friends, by LCD Soundsystem**

"C'mon baby, give it to me!" Morgan exclaimed, pulling the lever on the slot machine in the lobby of their hotel.

The machine shuddered and rattled, beeping and flashing its lights, desperate to keep its player's attention.

Emily, who was helping herself to coffee at the nearby refreshment table, shook her head. "Morgan," she said, groggily, "can you…?" She patted his shoulder. "Please, can you?" She pointed at her head, looking pained. "My head."

"Oh, my bad, sorry," he said, the grin on his face suggesting he was rather enjoying her discomfort.

Putting away her book, Grace watched them fondly from the couch she had claimed when they'd first begun to gather. Opposite her, Rossi gave her a wink as Emily sank unhappily into the seat beside him.

"You know these things are rigged, right?" Morgan remarked, as he abandoned the bleating machine.

Emily simply groaned, covering her eyes.

Rossi peered sidelong at her, ignoring the newspaper in his lap. "Late night?"

"Oh, I _hate_ Vegas," Emily moaned.

Grace, who had been party to exactly how much her friend had had to drink the previous evening, laughed. "Self-inflicted."

"C'mon Prentiss, how can you 'hate' Vegas?" Morgan teased. "This is a grown folks' playground!"

"Hey, anyone seen Reid?" JJ asked, emerging from the lobby proper.

"Well, he stayed with his mum last night," Grace offered, as the rest of the agents shrugged.

"Well, he should be here by now – he knows the departure time." The slot machine caught JJ's eye. "Ooh, this thing still has credit on it!"

She reached for the button, but Emily waved frantically at her, distraught. "JJ, I swear to God…"

"What?" JJ asked, surprised at the desperation evident in her friend's reaction.

Behind Emily, Rossi performed an inspired impression of her getting drunk the night before, and everyone immediately cracked up.

"What?" Emily complained, squinting at them.

"Oh, here he comes right now," Morgan said, nodding in the direction of the main doors, from where Spencer had bounced in.

Straight away, Grace could see that there was something different about the way he was holding himself today, as if there was a fresh purpose in his step.

She couldn't quite put her finger on why, but Grace got the distinct impression that he was up to something.

"What you do, sleep through your alarm?" Morgan asked, playfully.

"Sorry to keep you guys waiting," Spencer apologised.

"Hotch is already at the airstrip," said JJ. "How fast can you pack?"

Spencer licked his lips. "Actually, I'm gonna stay for a couple of days."

The rest of the team looked around at each other, mildly surprised.

"Everything alright?" Rossi asked.

Grace watched his face carefully. Maybe this case had prompted him to re-examine how he dealt with stress after all.

"Yeah! I just, um… I haven't seen my mom in a really long time, so I'd like a… few more days," Spencer stammered.

 _Or not_ , thought Grace. It was painfully obvious he was lying. Not for the first time, she wondered whether someone ought to take him to one side and teach him that particular skill.

"Are you sure?" Rossi asked, wearing the senior agent hat he didn't often enjoy. "Okay, take a few days. Do what you need to do."

Amicably, they gathered up their things and steered a still-groggy Emily out of the door.

It felt weird to be leaving Spencer behind, especially when he obviously needed them. Grace met Morgan's eyes for a moment, recalling the conversation they'd had a few days before.

"See you back in Washington," she said aloud, clapping Spencer on the back on her way out.

"Yeah, uh… I'll see you."

"You look after yourself okay?" said JJ, behind her.

Spencer gave a laugh that no one believed. "Yeah, and you – both of you!"

Cheerfully and without any kind of discussion, the five BAU agents strolled up the street in the direction of the entrance to the parking lot and nonchalantly hid just beyond the far wall of the hotel. From there, they had an unrestricted view of the front doors – and of Spencer Reid immediately leaving through them, hurrying off in the opposite direction to the Bennington Sanatorium.

"So," said Rossi, briskly. "Volunteers?"

0o0

Spencer walked into the unimposing headquarters of the North Las Vegas Police Department and approached the first desk. "Hi," he said, showing his badge to the officer working there. "I'm Special Agent Spencer Reid with the FBI. I'd like to see everything that you have on the 1984 murder of a boy named Riley Jenkins."

The officer nodded. "Just a second," he said, and headed off into the back of the building, which was presumably where they kept their records.

"Thanks," Spencer called after him.

He sighed, shoving his hands deeply into his pockets. He hated that he had to go about this search so sneakily, but this was something he knew he had to do. Odds were, the rest of the team wouldn't understand.

His new friend came back and told him one of the detectives would bring out what he needed. Mildly confused, Spencer thanked him again and allowed himself to be piloted to an empty desk to one side of the busy office.

 _Why would a detective take on so menial a task?_ he wondered.

Anxious, he looked around, hoping no one had figured out that his interest here was a little less than professional in this instance. No one appeared to be paying him the slightest bit of attention, however.

He took this as a good sign.

The guy who brought out the box was obviously a detective – he was wearing plain clothes and a gun, and had the world-weary expression of someone who had been in the job too long. Sighing, the man introduced himself as Detective Jacob Hyde. "That was a rough one."

"Did you work the case?" Spencer asked.

 _That explains the slightly jaded attitude,_ he thought. _It's always the ones we can't help that wear us down._

"Yeah," said Hyde, heavily. "I was three or four blocks away when the call came in on the radio. First kid." He shook his head, sadly. "You don't forget those."

Spencer nodded. He knew that from personal experience. "Let me ask you this: were there any suspects?"

The detective looked down, remembering. "We looked at the family, initially. The dad, older brother."

"Yeah, that makes sense," said Spencer, thoughtfully. "I hear the boy was found in his own basement, right?"

"Yeah, Hyde confirmed. "Well, after a while the family got defensive, stopped co-operating like the, uh –" He paused, obviously reaching for the name of another case, which was proving unforthcoming. "What's her name? The – uh – JonBenét case, I guess. I never liked 'em for it anyway."

Spencer frowned, watching the detective closely. He looked thoroughly beaten. This case was obviously bringing back some painful memories.

"I always figured it was somebody outside the home."

 _But you made sure to clear the family first,_ Spencer guessed. _Which didn't win you any friends in the community._

He nodded, opening the box.

"What's the Bureau's interest in the case?" Detective Hyde asked.

"Um, research," Spencer lied, glad that this guy didn't know him the way the team did. He rummaged in the box, bringing out two slim files. "Is this everything?"

Looking up, he caught the hardening of the other man's face. He hadn't intended to make it sound like Hyde hadn't pulled his weight, but two files on a home invasion, child rape and murder seemed very small.

"There might be another box down in records," said the detective, a slightly defensive note in his voice.

"I'd like to see it all, if you don't mind."

He waited until Hyde had gone before opening the first file. On top was a picture of Riley, looking exactly how he remembered him from what he was choosing not to describe as the hallucination at the funeral. Staring at the boy in the photo, he began to wonder if that had been it at all. Knowing Grace had opened up a whole raft of unsettling possibilities that sometimes he would rather have never considered.

Had Riley been actually been haunting him, all these years?

Spencer grimaced, looking down at the smiling boy, proudly wearing a Rovers' softball shirt and cap. The sight of that little red uniform sparked something in Spencer's mind. Suddenly he realised he had seen that uniform before, a very long time ago.

His mouth fell open as a dim show reel of his memory supplied him with a bright, sunlight park, and Riley Jenkins – just his height – hitting the ball with a soft thud. People were applauding – he was applauding, only a few feet behind the safety fence as the coach congratulated the batter.

"I _did_ know him…"

0o0

There hadn't been much more downstairs, which hadn't been particularly surprising, given Detective Hyde's slightly frosty attitude towards him.

Having liberated what he could, Spencer made his way through the labyrinthine corridors of the hotel, the box of records weighing heavily in his arms. Even though it was only about half full, he still had a little trouble balancing it on his thigh to get his key card out. When he rounded the corner before his room, he forgot any qualms about continuing to carry it, however.

His door was ajar.

Slowing almost to a complete stop, Spencer looked back along the corridor. It was empty. There were no housekeeping carts, and nothing to suggest anyone connected to the hotel should be in there. Perplexed, he double checked the number on his door in case he'd been distracted and gone to the wrong floor.

No, it was definitely his room – and it was definitely open. He could hear voices inside, like someone had the TV on. It didn't sound overly threatening. What kind of nefarious person broke in to someone's room to watch soap operas?

He shifted the box again, giving himself better access to his gun, and paused on the threshold, giving the door a light push.

 _Oh right,_ he thought. _That kind of nefarious person._

Inside, Derek Morgan, David Rossi and Grace Pearce were sprawled on his chairs and bed, eating potato chips and watching TV. Staring at them, Spencer couldn't decide whether he ought to be angry with them for staying or amused at their manner.

"What are you guys doin' here?" he asked, perplexed.

Morgan gestured at the TV as Spencer came in. "What's it look like we're doing?"

"Um… breaking into my room and watching _Days of Our Lives_?"

"Oh, is that what this is?" Grace asked, from the bed. "I was wondering."

" _The Young and the Restless_ ," Rossi clarified, turning it off.

Rolling his eyes, Spencer put the box down and hung the bag over the back of the weirdly tall chair by what was presumably intended as a breakfast bar, but was really more of a shelf.

"Shouldn't you guys be on a plane back to DC?" he asked, innocently.

"And you're supposed to be hangin' out with your mom," Rossi pointed out.

"And you're not," Morgan observed.

Spencer rubbed his nose anxiously, he hated being caught in a lie, especially by his best friends.

Morgan pointed at the box. "Riley Jenkins?"

"Uh, no – I – uh, I'm not – that's actually not why I'm here," Spencer stuttered, quickly moving to obscure their view of the files.

"God you're a terrible liar," said Grace, with a real affection in her voice that he would have wholeheartedly enjoyed had he not been desperately trying to think of a way of continuing to investigate a very cold case without them knowing. They were bound to try to stop him – and now, with the image of Riley and his dad fixed so firmly in his mind, there was no way he could back down.

"Reid," Morgan admonished. "C'mon man. Who d'you think you're talkin' to?"

Spencer looked away, feeling conflicted.

"We know what this has been doin' to you," said Morgan, getting to his feet.

"Let us help," said Rossi, joining them.

Grace got up too, and came to his side. "We've got your back, Spencer. Always."

He looked sidelong at her, unable to acknowledge, in the present company, the little shiver of pleasure hearing her speak his name in that lovely, ridiculous accent of hers always elicited. It meant a hell of a lot that they were there – and that they were there to help him continue his investigation, not to shut him down.

"Maybe together we can find out who killed him," Rossi offered.

"I think I might already know," said Spencer, finally accepting that they weren't going away.

"So, tell us about the suspect," Morgan encouraged.

"Truth is, I don't – I don't know anything about them." He met Grace's eyes, sadly, and swallowed. "He's my father."

0o0

 _What was silent in the father speaks in the son, and often I found in the son the unveiled secret of the father._

 _Friedrich Nietzsche_

0o0

In the tense, uncomfortable silence that followed Reid's proclamation, Spencer had opened the box he'd borrowed from the Las Vegas Police Department and started stacking the files within it on the bed, organising them chronologically.

It was better than meeting anyone's eyes.

Rossi cleared his throat, glancing at Morgan and Grace. "Before we go down this road, you need to be sure," he said.

"He's right," said Morgan, gently. "Some rocks don't need lookin' under."

"I don't know guys," said Grace, whose eyes had not left her best friend's face. "I think if it were me, I'd have to know."

Spencer shot her a grateful look. "My mind's sending me signals," he said. "I – I can't ignore them anymore."

"Mixed signals," Rossi warned him. "That's what the subconscious is all about. You _know_ that."

Spencer didn't want to think about it, however. "Yeah, but –"

"Reid, your dad left you," Morgan reminded him. "You take it to the Freudian extreme then you could say that he killed your childhood."

Spencer grimaced. That was pure nonsense – and Morgan knew it.

"It could explain the dream in which you see him as a murderer," Rossi told him.

Spencer met Grace's eyes for a moment. She wasn't trying to dissuade him, but she wasn't defending him either, this time. Suddenly he understood that she was allowing him the choice, no matter where the road took him, and loved her all the more for it

"I've come this far," he said, with certainty. "I'm not going back."

0o0

Emily, much recovered from her hangover that morning, following a few hours of much-needed sleep on the jet, was wrapping up a few loose ends from a couple of cases the team had worked weeks back. The seats around her were unusually empty, and there was a background irk in the back of her head about that, but she knew Spencer was well taken care of.

Singly, the members of their team were about as safe to leave alone as ice on a fireguard, but en-masse they were a force to be reckoned with. Consequently, she wasn't particularly worried about whatever was currently transpiring in Las Vegas.

"Emily," said JJ.

Emily looked up to discover her heavily pregnant friend coming over, along with their new, temporary media liaison.

"You remember Agent Todd?"

"Oh yeah. Hi," said Emily, shaking the woman's hand. "Welcome back!"

"Thanks!" said Todd, warmly. "I'll be shadowing JJ for the next couple weeks."

"Big shoes to fill." Emily grinned.

JJ laughed. "Well, big ankles at least."

They all laughed.

"Oh come on, you look great," Todd told her.

"Yeah, that's what I keep telling her," Emily agreed.

"Do you have kids too, or…?" Todd asked.

"Uh no," said Emily, mentally dismissing visions of locking various of her co-workers in adult sized playpens, where they would be safe. "I think JJ may have snared the last viable donor."

"Tell me about it!" Todd laughed.

"Donor for what?" Hotch asked, not even looking up from the file in his hands.

Their smirks faded and became something more professional.

 _Maybe Grace is right,_ thought Emily, amused. _Perhaps we should fit him with a bell._

"Uh nothing," said JJ with practiced charm, because as close as their team was, really no one wanted to explain that particular comment to their boss. "I'm just reacquainting Agent Todd here with the layout."

"Good to see you again SSA Hotchner," said Todd.

Hotch looked up and treated Jordan Todd to a rare smile. "Oh please – Hotch," he said, shaking her hand.

"Hotch," Todd accepted, happily. Looking back at JJ, she added, "So, where is the rest of the team?"

"Oh, another case came up when we were in Las Vegas," said Hotch casually, as if this sort of thing happened all the time. "They stayed behind to look into it. Excuse me." He departed, still reading his file, in the direction of Garcia's office.

Todd looked at them, surprised. "I thought you worked cases together."

Emily shared a quick glance with JJ who said, "This one's different."

 _It's one of our own,_ Emily thought.

0o0

The four of them were reviewing the elderly and somewhat sparse case files now, absorbing another sad, dark story from an otherwise bright corner of the world.

"Riley was six years old at the time," Spencer told them. "His father, Lou Jenkins was supposed to pick him up from T-ball practice at four, but he got delayed at work, prompting Riley to walk the three blocks home."

Grace, who had taken up residence on the bed again, flicked rapidly through the file she was reading, ascertained that T-ball was some kind of sport and looked up again.

"When his mother got home in the early evening, she found him dead in the basement," Spencer finished.

"So the offender came to the house after the boy arrived home," Rossi speculated.

Spencer nodded. "Or picked him up on the way there."

"It's not something in his routine," Grace mused, "but the unsub could have been stalking him before, looking for when he was most vulnerable. Riley probably recognised him from the local area and let him in."

"He coaxes Riley into the basement, where he assaults him," Morgan added.

"Boy's mouth was taped shut," Rossi observed.

"Symbolic," said Spencer at once. "He fears Riley will talk, panics, weighs his options…"

"Decides to make sure that he'll never talk," Morgan finished.

"He finds a knife, fishing gear under the stairs," Rossi went on, as Morgan joined Grace on the bed. "Stabs Riley nine times in the chest, stuffs him behind the washin' machine."

"Guess he thought they wouldn't find him there for a while, poor kid," Grace remarked, sadly.

"So the unsub's a white male in his late twenties to early thirties," Spencer proposed.

"Means we're lookin' for a man in his fifties," said Rossi, quickly calculating the difference a couple of decades would make.

Morgan nodded. "Likely knew the boy, maybe been to his house."

"Neighbour, sports coach, teacher," Grace suggested, ticking them off on her fingers. "Someone he trusted or looked up to."

The others nodded, except Spencer who was frowning down at the maps from the file, an ugly expression on his face.

"Reid," Morgan asked, his eyes on his friend's face. "What is it?"

"My family lived less than a half mile from the Jenkins'," he told them, tersely.

Rossi took in Spencer's expression. "You think your dad knew the boy?"

"I don't know," he responded, obviously frustrated. "My memory's…" Spencer scrubbed a hand over his face. "This lack of recall just reinforces how little I know about him."

Concerned, Morgan, Rossi and Grace exchanged worried looks.

Morgan licked his lips. "Reid, we're gonna have to track him down, you do know that?" he said, as delicately as he could.

"I should talk to my mother first," said Spencer at once, obviously trying to put off the inevitable. "Neighbours. Get – get their impressions."

"We can do that while you're talking to your mother," said Grace.

"Reid," said Rossi heavily, and Spencer sank back in his chair, the expression on his face showing how frustrated he was with all this – particularly with their hesitance to take his hunch about his father further straight away. "I don't need to tell you that this signature is need-based and sexual in nature."

He glanced down, uncomfortable. Suddenly, Grace wondered whether there was another reason besides the divorce and the murder that Spencer was so intent on pursuing this – or whether he knew at all, any more. It had to be hard for someone so accustomed to relying absolutely on his own mind to start to have to question it. The lack of memory was particularly distressing, given his knowledge of the links between trauma and repression.

"The man we're looking for is a paedophile," Rossi continued, bluntly. Delicate hadn't worked. "So, I'll ask you again: are you sure you wanna go down this road?"


	7. Some Rocks

**Essential Listening: Ultra Violet, by U2**

0o0

Spencer was sitting uncomfortably in the recreation room at Bennington, playing Scrabble rather half-heartedly with his mom. Although he was used to losing at this particular game (he couldn't resist making unusual words, even if they gave a comparatively low score), his focus was entirely elsewhere today, and his mother could definitely tell.

She was ignoring it for now, for which he was grateful. As much as he wanted closure for Riley Jenkins and his family (and for himself), the questions he had to ask her would put a great strain on her, and he really didn't want to do that. Consequently, while the others were tracking down the Jenkins' neighbours from seventeen years ago, he had played three rounds of Scrabble, and lost every one.

He squinted down at his tiles, and played a g, r and an e around two of his mom's words. Grace.

He bit his lip, hoping his mom wouldn't pick up on it, but of course she did. She fixed him with a penetrating stare for a few moments, but again she didn't comment. He looked away, chewing the inside of his mouth.

In the spare few minutes before the four of them had headed out, Grace had placed herself in his way in one of the hotel corridors, away from Morgan and Rossi, and given him a tight, brief hug. It had stopped his head spinning a little, which had bolstered him enough to head out here. However hard this was – wherever it led him – he was glad she, Morgan and Rossi would be walking down this road beside him.

He wished he was back there now, or even back in Washington. He wished he'd never heard of Riley Jenkins, or that he could forget his nightmares. He wished he could forget his father's face.

But he couldn't.

"Mom," he began tentatively, "can I ask you some questions about Dad?" She looked down, but he continued. "I've been having – uh…" he swallowed. "I'm having trouble remembering."

Spencer watched her changed in body language apprehensively. She had gone very still and very quiet, but after a moment she glanced up. He guessed that she understood that he needed to know. Although it was hard for him to admit it, he had been waiting for some of these answers for a long time. He'd never really asked her about the past – there had been a sort of unspoken accord not to. It had been too painful for both of them.

Plus there was the haziness her med's created. Memory was always the first thing to suffer, sad to say.

"What do you wanna know?" his mom asked, quietly.

Where to start, though, that was the question.

"Did he like to be around children?" Spencer asked.

"Children?" she looked up, puzzled, and he nodded. "Well, yes," she told him. "If it were up to him you'd have had a house full of brothers and sisters."

He smiled slightly at the image before continuing, "So… _you_ didn't want more kids?"

"Why mess with perfection?" she asked and winked, which made him smile, despite the situation.

The smile faded when his mother looked away and he frowned. "Well, um…" He licked his lips. "What about other people's children? How – how was he around them?"

"He was good with kids I guess," she said, almost smiling. As much pain as his departure had caused her, he'd always known that she was still a little bit in love with his dad. "He coached your little league team."

Suddenly, the memory of Riley and the coach fleshed out a little more than before. He looked into the mind's eye of his four-year old self and saw his dad – a towering sports coach (or so it seemed to him) – turning to him after congratulating Riley, encouraging him to go next.

He remembered being happy about it at the time… how had he forgotten so much?

"He was always trying to push you into normal activities," Diana said, but he was only half listening, so caught up in the sound the bat made and the smell of the summer grass. "I tried to tell him you weren't normal." She took his hand across the table. "You were exceptional."

Spencer smiled properly this time, brought back to the present. It was good to be around her on a good day, he decided, promising himself he'd come back to see her more often after this, as he had done a thousand times before.

His face clouded once more as he turned his mind back to the present problem. "Let me ask you this, Mom." He licked his lips again. His mouth felt dry. Did you ever get the feeling like… on his part the marriage was… just for show?"

His mother stared at him. "These questions are very strange, Spencer. What is this about?"

"It's about Riley Jenkins," he replied, carefully.

"Riley Jenkins?" Diana frowned. "I told you, he was someone you made up."

"No." Spencer shook his head. "He's not someone I made up. He was a real boy who lived in our neighbourhood, and somebody killed him, and… I don't know, I think…" he swallowed hard, rushing the next few words. "I – I think dad might have had something to do with it."

His mom didn't appear to have heard him, however. She was peering intently at the table, as if it held the key to all mysteries. "He was real?"

"Yes, and – he was on that little league team, too."

0o0

Lou Jenkins was a heavy set, grizzled looking man in his fifties. You could tell he'd spent most of his working life outdoors and doing manual labour. You could tell, too, that he'd had a trauma. There was something emphatic about the way he moved, as if direct action was the only way to keep his head above the rising waters only he could see.

He was forthright and kind of blunt. Derek wondered how much of that had been in him before his wife had come home and found their son on the floor of the basement in a pool of his own blood.

It had started out okay. He'd been a little stiff with them, as one might expect of a man who had considered the case cold – and who had been treated as a suspect, way back when. Testing the waters, they had broached the subject of William Reid's possible involvement, and it hadn't gone down particularly well.

"It's just a theory, Mr Jenkins," Reid remarked.

Lou Jenkins stared them both down. "You must be out of your damn minds."

"We're tryin' to get some new facts," Derek told him, as the man began to load his truck up for the ride to the next site – or the wholesale builder's yard.

"Well you're hell and gone from facts if you think Will Reid killed my son," Jenkins retorted.

Clearly, he thought the very idea was laughable, which was interesting, if not conclusive. Preferential predators were good at hiding in plain sight, but it would be pretty unusual for neither parent to have ever got a negative read off him if Reid's dad had been their boy's murderer.

"So, you were friends?" Reid asked, changing tack.

Jenkins turned and stared at them, assessing their expressions, body language. "Who the hell are you to come here, askin' this?"

He shook his head and went to get in his truck, but Reid's words stopped him in his tracks.

"I'm his son."

That got his attention alright. Jenkins immediately came back to have a look at the kid he'd last seen over twenty years before, all grown up and spouting outlandish theories about the death of his son.

"Spencer?"

There was even the beginning of a smile there now, remembering the kid as a little squirt. It kind of made Morgan wish there had been a picture of the whole little league team in the file.

The kid seemed in little mood for flippancy or reminiscing, however. He simply gave a nod and a quirk of the eyebrow.

 _Man, he's pissed_ , thought Morgan. _Even now, even out here, just talking to someone who says he was friends with his old man._

"Spencer, a G-man," Jenkins mused, and the smile emerged a little more. "How about that."

He seemed almost pleased for him, Derek thought, which spoke to Lou's general countenance. He obviously didn't begrudge anyone else's kids the life that was taken from his boy.

"But I don't understand," he said, the smile fading.

He _was_ prepared to listen though, since it was Reid, and that was a start.

Derek took advantage of it. "Was William around your house often?"

"No," said Jenkins, shaking his head. "The occasional barbecue, that sorta thing."

"Was Riley around on these occasions?" Reid asked, like a dog with a bone.

"Why are you doin' this?" Jenkins asked him. He seemed genuinely confused, but Reid seemed unable to see that, too driven, by this point, to notice.

"I need to know."

"Take it from someone who _does_ know: he was a good man," said Jenkins, firmly.

"Thanks for your time," said Derek. He made a move to leave, but paused when he saw that Reid had stayed put.

"Where is he these days?" Reid asked, and there was something brittle to his frame now. Jenkins likely couldn't see it, but Derek sure as hell could. "My dad?"

"It's been years," Jenkins told him, realising that they must be estranged, "but he's probably still at that same firm in Summerlin."

Reid paused, looking staggered. "He's been in town this whole time?"

"Far as I know."

To Derek's concern, Reid almost swayed on the spot as he turned to leave. Behind them, Jenkins got in his truck; at the back of his mind, Derek noted that he didn't start the engine straight away. He was probably as shook up about this as the kid plainly was.

"You know Summerlin?" Derek asked.

"Yeah, it's like nine miles east of here off the ninety-five," said Reid angrily. "He was ten minutes away and he never let me know."

0o0

Grace ran her eyes over Spencer's tense shoulders from the back seat of the Yukon.

He was fidgety – twitchier even than the long, hot, Dilaudid-fueled week they'd first met. It didn't bode well for the interview, personal as it was.

Grace bit her lip and looked out of the window instead, not really seeing the buildings they were passing. Rossi was driving today, so they were travelling at a normal speed. If they had been back in the UK, back when she had been a DI, and Spencer had been a subordinate, she would have taken him off this case – or at least had him step back a little, give him a little breathing space. And have an officer posted on either side of his apartment block, in case he decided to take matters into his own hands.

She would. She wouldn't be able to stop herself. And therein lay the danger.

Although she would stand beside him to the end of this – wherever it took him – she was aware there was a moment coming when she might have to be the rational voice (if Morgan and Rossi weren't there), and that he wasn't likely to listen.

He looked like he might start to hyperventilate when he got out of the car.

While Morgan and Rossi were faffing about with their sunglasses, she brushed her hand against his wrist and Spencer grabbed her hand for a moment, almost desperately. He let go just as quickly and stalked inside.

The offices of Wieder, Kirschenbaum and Moore, Attorneys at Law, was small and neat. It looked like it attracted sensible, generally law-abiding clients, and Grace wholeheartedly approved of its understated outlook.

She approved of the receptionist, too. The woman had her eyes on them the moment they walked in. That was the trouble with being FBI. Agents had a tendency to move and walk with all the confidence and duty of their positions; if you knew what you were looking for, it was unmistakable.

And this young woman was no fool. "Can I help you gentlemen, ma'am?"

"Yeah," said Spencer, who had got to the desk first. His vocal chords, however, appeared to have been left behind somewhere, as he was suddenly unable to finish his sentence. He opened and shut his mouth a few times before Rossi came to the rescue.

"We'd like to speak to William Reid," said the senior agent.

"Is he expecting you?"

"I don't think so," said Rossi, showing her his badge. Morgan and Grace did the same, but Reid seemed incapable of forming complete thoughts.

"Well, he's in a meeting right now," the receptionist, accepting their authority, but maintaining her own. "Why don't you take a seat and I'll tell him you're here."

Grace approved. This woman was clearly very good at her job. Spencer, bless him, was breathing pretty heavily now, obviously quite panicked about seeing his father for the first time, probably, since he'd walked out on him and his mother when he was ten.

She wasn't the only one who had noticed, either.

"You okay?" Morgan asked, eyeing up their unusually anxious genius.

"Yeah. No, yeah – I'm… uh, gonna go to the bathroom."

The three of them shared a look as he practically fled down the hall.

"I've never seen him like this before," Morgan remarked, obviously a little freaked out himself.

"Seventeen years is a long time to go between visits," said Rossi.

Morgan raised an eyebrow. "Not long enough, the kid's still angry."

"Yeah, I'm startin' to get that," said Rossi.

Grace sighed, trying not to stare down the corridor after him. "Can't be easy."

The three of them looked up as the door beyond the reception desk opened. A man came out, small, wiry and smiling.

He was too short, surely, to be William Reid – but then there was something about his eyes, something about his mouth. It curved the same way as Spencer's did when he was really happy. It wasn't his expression, as such – not after seventeen years – but the shape…

"I'll be right back," he said, into the room, then turned to look at the receptionist, who gestured at them.

There was a moment of mutual assessment. He was a neat, clean cut sort of man. Grace tried not to stare. She couldn't get over how short he is, compared to his son.

 _God, Spencer, your dad is tiny._

She could see a lot more of Diana in Spencer, really. But that wasn't surprising, given he'd spent most of his formative years around her.

"You're from the FBI?" William Reid said.

"Yes sir, Mr Reid," Rossi nodded, as the assembled agents all flashed their badges. "I'm Agent Rossi, this is Agent Morgan and Agent Pearce."

William Reid took a moment to read them and nodded briskly. "This wouldn't be about the council investigation, would it?"

He seemed so easy going. Grace frowned. It was always hard to profile someone on sight, but right now, this was the last person she would have ever put down as a preferential predator, even without knowing who his son was, or what his suspicions were.

"No, this is – uh – more of a personal matter," said Rossi.

"It concerns your son," Morgan told him.

"My son?" His whole body language changed entirely – he was immediately alert; concerned. "Did – did something happen to him?"

"No," Grace assured him, but Spencer interrupted

"That's what we're tryin' to find out," he said, coming back in.

The two men stared at each other for a moment.

"Hello Dad."

Spencer's expression was deeply troubled and far from friendly, but his father seemed unable to conceal his joy at seeing him again as he ushered them into his rather spacious and tastefully decorated office. Spencer refused to sit, so Morgan stayed on his feet as well, but Grace and Rossi took their places on the couch opposite William Reid, trying to retain enough cordiality to keep this thing moving.

As hard on Spencer as this was, they had a victim to think about, as well as his own, hurt sensibilities.

And boy was he hurt. He was standing about as close to the door as he could practically be and radiating the kind of intense panic Grace associated with wild animals. If he'd been a suspect she'd be pulling out her handcuffs and tensing for pursuit. Wishing she could be of more emotional support than she was currently able, with two fellow agents and a possible hostile in the room, she aimed a tight smile at William Reid, who still couldn't stop grinning up at Spencer.

As hurt as her friend obviously was, she kind of felt for the guy.

He chuckled. "You don't look like me anymore," he observed. Spencer quirked a hostile eyebrow at that, but his dad carried on. "You used to! Everybody said so," he told the others, proudly.

"They say some people look like their dogs, too," Spencer remarked, which rather wiped the smile off his old man's face. "It's attributed to long, mutual exposure."

Grace winced, watching it sink in how pissed Spencer still was at him.

"Elderly couples, also," Spencer continued, brutally. "They unconsciously mimic the expressions of people they've been around their whole life. So it kinda – kinda makes sense that I wouldn't look like you. I haven't seen you in twenty years."

He was almost shaking he was so angry.

"So, you in town on work?" William asked lightly, trying to maintain the illusion that everything was fine.

"We're just wrapping up a case," said Rossi, somewhere between tersely professional and keenly uncomfortable.

"Five year old boy was abducted and murdered," Morgan added.

William nodded sadly. "Yeah, I read about that, uh…" He leaned back, thinking. "Ethan Hayes, right? It's terrible."

"Good recall," thought Grace.

 _Now is that a genetic thing, or did Ethan's case grab you for other reasons?_

"The case got me thinking about, uh – Riley Jenkins," Spencer told him.

Grace was watching for it, so she saw the moment where William Reid remembered something and chose not to disclose it.

"You remember Riley Jenkins?" Spencer asked, angrily.

"Of course," said his dad.

"I've been having dreams about him for – a really long time," Spencer began, haltingly, "but when we came back here for this case it jogged something – and the dream changed. I saw his killer… and it was you."

William's face fell slightly, but not much – not enough. About as much as a man's face might fall whose reunion with his only child wasn't going quite the way he'd imagined it.

It looked like his dad could bottle things up just the same as Spencer could.

"Interesting dream," he said.

"You don't seem all that surprised," Morgan reflected.

He smiled at his son's colleagues. "I stopped being surprised by Spencer's mind a long time ago."

Rossi nodded. "There are certain criteria we consider when looking at this kind of suspect. _You_ fit parts of that profile."

William looked around at them all, momentarily taken aback at how seriously they were all taking this. "Me?"

Rossi nodded again. "We just want your cooperation."

"My cooper-" He looked around again, at four unflinching faces, and his expression hardened. "You're not actually saying you think I killed Riley Jenkins?"

He addressed the question to Grace, probably because she had yet to say anything negative to him. She stayed quiet – this was Spencer's ballgame, not hers.

"We didn't say that," Spencer replied.

"Good! Cause that's absurd!" William scoffed.

"We'd just like permission to access your computer. Look through your records," Morgan continued in that quiet, calm voice he used when he wanted to sound reasonable.

"And – and, what would you be looking for, exactly?" William demanded, getting quite annoyed now.

Grace couldn't blame him. "Things that could take you off our list," she said, in an attempt to dial it back a bit.

She was conscious that if four FBI agents had walked into _her_ office and tried to intimidate her into showing them her files, she might be feeling hostile and uncooperative, too

There was a hardness to his face now that Grace recognised from his son. "You want access to my files," said William, looking right at Spencer. "Get a warrant."

They got to their feet and the boys filed out, recognising a dismissal when they heard it. Pushing the man had been necessary, but it had given them a lot of information.

"Thank you for your time," said Grace, who was last out, and had offered him her hand to shake.

He took it, surprised. "He…" he began, as she reached the door. "He… doesn't really believe that, does he? That I killed Riley?"

Grace glanced after her best friend in the whole world and then back at the father who had left him behind. William took her silence as answer enough.

"Help us set him straight then," she said, after a moment.

"Not without a warrant," he reiterated, sadly.

She nodded, thinking about her own dad, and what she might feel if she were able to speak to him again. "You know they say," she offered. "Time heals all things," she said. "Sometimes it takes a little more than time."

With that she hurried after the others.

0o0

Spencer stalked through the hotel towards his room, his cell phone clamped to his ear. Meeting his father had left a bitter taste in his mouth and he was more convinced than ever that _that man_ had murdered Riley Jenkins. Fortunately, the rest of the team in Quantico seemed just as determined to help him out.

"We can't get a warrant, so we'll have to go in under the radar on this one, Garcia," he said.

He heard her starting to type before she spoke. _"You want me to hack your father's network? You sure about this?"_

"I really wish people would stop asking me that," she said, frustrated.

He hung up and let himself into his hotel room. He nearly stepped on the manila envelope that has quite obviously been shoved under his door, but avoided it neatly, thinking of forensics. Spencer picked it up and looked at it, intrigued. There was a post-it attached to the flap. It read, _'You're looking at the wrong guy'._

He opened it, deeply suspicious. Inside was the Las Vegas Police Department file of a man with brown hair and large, wire-rimmed glasses. He was small, from his stats, and average looking. Something about him was maddeningly familiar; Spencer stared at him.

Somewhere in the back of him mind, something stirred.

A sunny day, twenty odd years in the past, and a chess game in the park, and a stranger with wire rimmed glasses complimenting his game.

 _I – I knew him?_


	8. Two Match Lads

**Essential listening: Broken Homes, by Papa Roach**

0o0

The mornings in Las Vegas, it seemed, were cool and calm, the complete antithesis to the hot, chaotic evenings. Grace had slept dreamlessly and deeply, despite her anxiety for her friend, and had breakfasted early so she could get in a quiet walk around the block before the tension of the last couple of days reinstated itself. Somewhat unexpectedly, it had begun again in the lobby, when Spencer had brought out an incriminating file someone had given him the night before.

It had 'red herring' written all over it, though disregarding it would be foolish. The whole thing was beginning to feel decidedly surreal, like something out of a _Hardy Boys_ adventure.

"Was the envelope dropped off at the front desk first?" Rossi asked.

Grace watched Spencer's face. His expression was tense and closed off. She got the distinct impression that if he had his way he'd be doing all of this on his own. He was involving them now only out of sufferance – particularly as he had obviously sensed that they were less than convinced about his father's guilt. He'd sat on the file, brooding, all night, and he hadn't knocked on her door. She'd texted him when she'd noticed the light still on in his room, but he hadn't replied, even though she could hear him pacing through the wall.

It wasn't a problem, not really. Everyone needed some space, particularly at a time like this.

She would back off a little and then, when he could cope with proximity again, he could come and find her.

"Nope, they went straight to my room," Spencer told them.

Rossi frowned. "So they know what room you were in."

"That's pretty forward," Grace remarked, feeling defensive on her friend's behalf.

"I do have to admit the timing of this is a little suspicious," Morgan reflected.

"Yeah. An hour after I see my father we're handed another suspect?" Spencer grimaced and gave a little shake of his head, a dark look on his face. "Who falls for that?"

"Not long after we saw Lou Jenkins either," Grace mused, mostly to herself. She looked up in time to catch the flash of annoyance Spencer sent her. "It's worth bearing in mind – they did know each other at the time of the murder."

"You think you knew this guy?" Ro asked, nudging him back on track.

Spencer turned his glare back to the photo in the file. "I don't know. I – I think so, but I'm not sure. No. No… I don't know."

He was plainly agitated, that was for sure.

"This guy's a real creep," Grace remarked, reading over Rossi's shoulder.

"Exposed himself to a minor," Rossi observed. "That's a precursor to molestation."

"And murder." Morgan nodded. "We should take a closer look at this guy."

"Yeah, if he's not involved in Riley's murder, odds are he's good for some others," Grace reasoned, one eye on Spencer's expression.

He looked distinctly unimpressed.

Morgan's phone rang, breaking the unhealthy silence. "It's Garcia," he announced, putting her on speaker. "Yeah, talk to me Baby Girl," he said, as they all moved in to listen.

" _I'm not interrupting boy time at Crazy Horse Two, am I?"_ she asked, with her usual flamboyance.

Grace grinned as Morgan joined in. They needed this. They needed some daft to outweigh the darkness.

"You know that's not my thing. I'm more for in-room entertainment," Morgan quipped.

"Down boy," Grace threw in.

" _I can't help you there,"_ said Garcia, at once, _"but I do give good phone."_

"Garcia…" Grace warned, laughing.

"Lemme hear what you got," said Morgan.

" _Reid, we've been all UP in your father's business,"_ Garcia announced.

Spencer's frown deepened. "What did you find?"

" _Well, I'll tell you first what I did_ not _find,"_ Garcia began. "No kiddie porn, no membership to illicit websites, no dubious emails, no chat room history…"

 _All positive signs,_ Grace thought. She watched Spencer's face carefully; he wasn't going to let go of this. Not yet.

"What about his finances?" he asked.

" _We went back ten years,"_ Hotch replied, who must have been hovering behind Garcia. _"No questionable transactions that we can find."_

" _Well, he did buy a ticket to see Celine Dion six months ago, but I think we can overlook that,"_ Prentiss added, from somewhere in Garcia's lair.

"He's smart," Spencer reminded them. "Is it possible that he kept things under the table?"

" _Well of course, but – from what we can tell Reid, he doesn't fit the profile,"_ Hotch told him.

Spencer was chewing the inside of his mouth now, obviously tense and obviously not willing to accept the possibility of his father's innocence. It was written all over him.

" _We can tell you other things about him if you wanna know,"_ Prentiss offered.

Spencer glanced quickly around at his colleagues and consciously shut himself off a little, preparing himself. He nodded slightly, frowning. "I'm listening."

" _Uh, he's a workaholic,"_ Prentiss said. _"He actually clocks more hours than we do. He makes decent money, but he doesn't spend a lot of it. He has a modest house, he drives a hybrid. He doesn't travel much, he stays away from the casinos… um, and according to his veterinary bills he has a very sick cat."_

" _He appears to spend most of his free time alone,"_ Hotch continued. _"Goes to the movies a lot and he reads – and from his collection of first editions it seems his favourite author is –"_

"Isaac Asimov, I remember that one," Spencer interrupted, swallowing.

" _He does have one other major interest,"_ Garcia said. _"On his home computer he's archived like a gagillion things on one, common subject."_

Spencer frowned, intrigued despite himself. "What?"

" _You, kiddo,"_ Garcia said, gently. _"He's got, like, everything that's ever been published online. Every article you've been quoted in, pieces written for behavioural science journals… he even has a copy of your dissertation."_

"He's keeping tabs on you," Rossi reflected. "That's sayin' something."

Spencer shot him a dark look. "Yeah, he Googled me. That makes up for everything," he scoffed. "I'mnna get some air."

He pushed past Morgan and Rossi and stalked outside, leaving the spinning doors swinging behind him. They watched him go.

Grace sighed.

"You guys still there?" Morgan asked, after a moment.

" _We thought we were giving him good news,"_ said Garcia sadly, obviously a little stunned at his reaction.

Grace shrugged. "When you've been angry this long even good news can hurt."

" _What can we do?"_ Hotch asked, all business.

"Yeah, look up a name for us if you would – uh, Gary Brendan Michaels," Morgan read.

" _You like this Gary guy for the Riley murder?"_ Prentiss asked.

"Somebody does," said Rossi.

"Either way," said Grace, when the dismayed agents had hung up, "it's going to be tough convincing Spencer his dad's innocent."

Morgan sighed. "I don't get it. If it were me, I'd be doing everythin' to clear my dad's name."

"Yeah, but our parents left in very different ways," Grace said gently. "They were taken from us. His dad volunteered."

"Someone should go talk to him," said Rossi.

Grace, who had made up her mind that that was the last thing Spencer needed, was already shaking her head when she realised they were both looking at her. "No, he needs the space right now. What?"

"He might listen to you," said Morgan. "He –" He cracked a smile. "Well, we all know he likes you."

Grace narrowed her eyes. "He likes _all_ of us, that's why we're friends."

"Yeah," Morgan said, looking shifty. "But you a little more than the rest…"

Grace gave both her colleagues a very hard look. "I think you may be reading into something that just isn't there," she lied. "Irrespective, we shouldn't push him too far – he's had a lot to take in already this morning."

The two agents exchanged a look that said they didn't believe her.

"Normally, I'd agree," said Rossi carefully, "but we're here pretty unofficially – we don't have time for him to decompress for too long."

"And even if he doesn't 'like' you, you still have a knack for calming him down," Morgan prompted.

Grace sighed. "For the record, I really don't think this is a good idea," she said. "Fine."

She stalked off, without another word and marched up and down the outside of the hotel for a few minutes in case he was wandering about out there. He wasn't in his hotel room, either – or, at least, if he was, he wasn't answering the door.

By the time Grace walked back through the lobby, Morgan and Rossi had made themselves scarce, which was probably a wise move. She was in no mood to talk to them right now.

She found him in the hotel bar, drinking water and mindlessly playing a casino game on the touchscreen slot machines someone had installed in the bar. Grace watched him for a moment. His shoulders were tight and tense as he hunched over the game, but at least his focus wasn't entirely insular.

She wasn't the only one keeping an eye on him, it seemed.

In the seat next to Spencer there was a striking, well-dressed woman who was beginning to pay attention to him – or at least beginning to pay attention to how much he was continually winning. One glance at the woman's machine told a story of woe.

Grace took in the carefully tight clothes and the perfectly coiffured hair and understood. It really was extraordinary how Spencer always seemed to manage to attract hookers – probably because he was inherently unthreatening.

"Wow," said the woman, when Spencer's machine played the winning jingle again. "Looks like you got a loose one."

"There's actually no such thing," Spencer told her absently. "These machines run on – random number generators. No brains, no bias. Best odds in the house, though."

"Really? I thought craps had the best odds." She moved closer, peering over his shoulder, but he didn't seem to notice.

"Well, normally dealer poker odds are slightly worse, at point seven percent," he reeled off. "But if you employ optimal strategy and always push for the royal flush you can push those odds to two percent."

The woman looked at him, narrowing her eyes. "Hmm. Smart _and_ handsome."

For the first time, Spencer looked over at her, surprised and quite baffled. Grace would have interceded then and there, but her friend had grown up in Vegas and was a behavioural analyst – he probably knew exactly what was going on. Plus, she was a little curious to see how he'd handle it.

The woman backtracked, sensing his assessment of her. "Are you in town for the convention?"

"Um… there are twelve conventions in town this week, which one are you talking about?" Spencer asked, frowning down at his machine.

The hooker laughed lightly. "Take your pick."

He gave his machine a half smile. He was definitely onto her now, if he hadn't been before.

She lit her cigarette.

"Six minutes," he said, after his machine made another triumphant noise.

"Excuse me?"

"Uh – it was something I used to say to my mom to try to get her to quit smoking," Spencer admitted. "A cigarette takes six minutes off your life, so every time she'd light one I'd say 'that's six minutes less that I get to spend with you'."

Grace smiled. He really was a sweetheart.

"Aww, did it work?"

It didn't help that he was genuinely charming.

He laughed. "No."

"I've tried it all – the gum, the patch, nothing works," she told him. "Tell you what – I'll put mine out if you buy me a drink."

Spencer swallowed. "Uh… um, I don't –"

Grace took this as her cue.

"Hey," she said, and was pleased to find Spencer smiling up at her. He looked happy to see her, at least, which was a good start. "Been looking for you." She looked at the hooker and said, not unkindly, "Sorry honey, better luck next time."

She took it pretty well as Spencer slid out of his seat and got to his feet. They were walking towards the door when the woman exclaimed, "Hey, you've got nearly two thousand dollars on here!"

"Keep it," said Spencer, dismissively. "Put it towards quitting smoking."

"Two thousand dollars?" Grace asked, surprised.

"I put like five dollars in." He shrugged.

"You really are a peach," she told him, and he smiled a little as they moved out into the lobby. "How're you doing?"

The smile evaporated.

Grace rubbed his arm.

"Why does everyone want me to like him?" Spencer asked, rubbing his neck in frustration.

Grace thought about it. "I think it's more that we don't want you to be unhappy," she said gently. "He obviously hurt you and your mum a great deal when he left you, and that's not going to heal overnight."

"All I want is justice for Riley," he said, almost sulkily.

"And that's what we're going to get," Grace assured him. "We just need to focus on that."

He tilted his head to one side, suddenly much stiller than he had been. Grace's copper's instinct kicked in, making her move more solidly back onto her feet. It was a subtle move into a defensive, fighting position, and she couldn't help it. Training like that had a way of crawling into your blood.

Spencer didn't miss it either; his expression hardened. "You think – you think we're _not_ focussing on that?" he enquired, almost pettishly.

"I didn't say that."

"But you think our focus – _my_ focus is a little off?" His voice was more clipped now, almost biting off the ends of the words.

"Spencer," she said, exasperated. "I just think we need to explore all the possibilities, that's all."

 _I really don't want to fight. Not now, not while you're hurting_ , she thought, feeling helpless.

He frowned, the tightness around his eyes returning. "Other possibilities," he said. "You mean _other_ possibilities, not all. Other than my father."

She licked her lips, unsure how to bring the conversation back from the edge. She wasn't entirely sure that she could. "He's one of the possibilities, certainly, but –"

"But you think I'm wrong?" Spencer interrupted.

"No, I –"

"That's what you just said!"

His voice was raising a little now, getting snippier. Grace held her breath for a moment, counting to ten in her head. She needed to sound calm, or the fight he was pushing for would happen right here, in the busy lobby of a hotel, where there would be no way to step outside or step back.

Unconsciously, she touched the pocket watch her father had given her, feeling oddly trapped.

"No," she said, aware that Rossi and Morgan had been quite right about the time constraints they were under. "It's not."

"Flawed then?" he prompted, refusing to let go.

Maybe he couldn't let go right now. Grace didn't know. What she _did_ know was that he had to keep a steadier head than this or Hotch would have no choice but to shut down the investigation into Riley Jenkins' murder and order Spencer home. She couldn't imagine that going down well, and there was also the small matter of the preferential predator who had never been caught.

She tried again, swallowing her annoyance. "Spencer – no, listen," she said, when he tried to interrupt. "Your instincts are right on target, just as they always are, but the rest of you is –"

"Is what?" he demanded.

"Is all over the map," she said, with a slight air of resignation.

"All over the map. That's what you're saying isn't it?" he snarled, his usually gentle eyes clouded with betrayal. "I need to take a step back because my logic is flawed? I can't keep my head straight? I'm not handling this case properly?"

"I think you're handling this particular conversation _really_ well," she snapped, and then immediately wished she hadn't.

With a face like thunder, Spencer turned on his heel and stalked off across the lobby. Swearing under breath, Grace followed him.


	9. Match and Spark

**Essential listening: The Sharp Hint of New Tears, by Dashboard Confessional**

0o0

Derek was restless.

Given how the Michaels file had mysteriously appeared in Reid's room, he and Rossi had tracked down the concierge and any members of staff who might have been nearby while they were out at the sheriff's office the day before. They'd been out of the hotel for some time, so it was quite an exhaustive list of people.

Rossi had volunteered to watch the CCTV – even though they had discovered, with some irritation, that there were no cameras on Reid's corridor, or on the one leading to it. Really, if they could prove that anyone involved with the case had been in the building at any point that day it would be a beginning.

If it was a member of the Las Vegas Police Department, who were realistically the only people who could have had access to Michaels' file, then all to the good. At least they would know who was yanking their chain.

Derek had left him in the security office with a large coffee, unable to keep from moving. Pearce's outright reluctance to try to talk Reid around had him a little off-centre; he knew he'd taken a risk by goading her about Reid liking her, but really he had no idea she'd be so determined to pretend that no one had noticed.

Denial was an extraordinary thing.

He was lurking around the rack of tourist flyers, trying not to look like he was scanning the exits for his friends, when Reid stalked across the main part of the lobby, closely followed by Pearce. They both looked pretty pissed off. It reminded him strongly of the time Reid had blown up at her, months before.

He started moving towards them, alarm bells going off in his head, but stopped when Pearce caught the crook of Spencer's arm and he span around.

"What do you want from me?" he demanded, and Derek winced.

He was beginning to think Pearce had been right about not bringing Reid back out of his shell for a little while.

"I don't want anything from you!" she retorted. "I'm just trying to be your friend."

"Well don't!" Reid spat, and then looked momentarily nonplussed, as if he hadn't intended to say that at all.

Pearce ignored him. "You've lost all objectivity Spencer – you have to take a step back and get your bearings."

"I know what my mind is telling me!" he argued. "I've got to be able to trust my instincts."

"Well, maybe your instincts are a little off."

Morgan winced again. He suspected that had come out a little more tartly than Pearce had intended. Reid, who was obviously taking everything as a provocation (as he sometimes did when he was hurt), lapped it up.

"My instincts?" he asked. " _My_ instincts are fine. You wanna talk about instincts?"

"Not especially," said Pearce, in the kind of voice that told Derek she was getting close to her limit.

He'd seen her angry before – at cases, at Reid – and that didn't bother him. Theirs wasn't the kind of job where you could always keep a lid on your frustrations. The trouble was, there was always something about her anger that seemed strangely muted, as though she was working very hard indeed not to lose control.

It put him on edge a little, particularly when Reid was doing everything he could to wind her up. Really, it was very childish; the kid really didn't know how to process his anger. Derek would be the first to admit that he had problems with that too, but he tended to take it out on nearby doors, rather than on his team mates.

Not for the first time, he wondered whether the lack of an emotional filter the kid sometimes displayed put him somewhere on the spectrum.

Pearce, on the other hand…

Derek had the weird feeling that for Pearce there was a Line. She had trained as a beat cop in the UK, so up to that Line, nothing would make her snap, but once someone crossed it…

He watched her body language, which was moving from 'exasperated and annoyed' to 'I really wouldn't fuck with me' and groaned inwardly. Derek hesitated; he really ought to go and break it up, but there was always the suggestion with those two that there was something romantic going on. He really didn't want to get in the middle of _that_ , particularly if a good bit of shouting was what they needed.

He had hoped that Pearce might be able to get through to him; Reid, however, seemed to be in anything but a listening mood. "We're federal agents, we have to trust our instincts," he insisted, ignoring her. "So when my head is telling me something so clearly I _have_ to listen to it! Why can't you just trust me?"

"Because you could be misremembering."

Reid scoffed.

"I mean it Spencer," Pearce told him, all attempt at mollification gone now. "You said yourself that your memory is unusually hazy around the time of Riley's murder."

"Maybe because I sensed something was wrong, and I –"

"Or maybe you were upset about your dad leaving and you blocked out anything to do with him," Pearce interrupted. "Like playing little league while he was coach, or moving house after your parents argued. It could have been anything."

"No," said Reid, shaking his head. "It's him. It's got to be him."

Derek stared at him. He was clutching at straws – and he should have been able to see that.

"And you think you're thinking clearly about him?" Pearce argued. "You sound determined to make him guilty!"

"That's because he _is_ guilty!"

"You don't know that!" Pearce snapped, exasperated.

People were beginning to turn their heads now, aware of the raised voices. To anyone else, it looked like a lovers' tiff. Well, to Derek too, actually.

"I get it," she continued, stubbornly. "He left you, it hurt. That doesn't make him a murderer!"

"You don't know anything about it!" Reid snapped, practically shouting now. The receptionists began to look up from their desks.

"I know you left 'rational' behind when you got up this morning," she retorted.

"Oh, that's right _Gracie_ , always the one with the answers, always the one pretending to empathise!" Reid snarled; Derek wondered whether he'd ever called her that before – and then whether anyone else ever had and survived. "Well, you have no damn idea what it feels like for your dad to pick something or somewhere else over you! You don't know what it's like for him to walk away one day and never see him again."

Derek felt his mouth fall open. Surely, Reid knew about her dad – and surely he wouldn't bring it up, even if he was as pissed as he currently was?

"Oh, don't I?" Grace asked, softly – almost too softly for Derek to hear.

Her eyes were narrowed, and her hands were balled into fists at her sides, the knuckles white with tension. The warning bells in the back of his head turned into a full-blown klaxon.

Reid, who was living dangerously today, scoffed again. "That's got nothing to do with it," he refuted.

"Look," said Grace, with gritted teeth. "My gut says it isn't him."

Derek felt he ought to move, but his feet were rooted to the spot, glued there by the verbal tennis match occurring across the lobby.

"Your gut? Oh, okay, _Gracie,_ your gut." He gave a mirthless laugh, narrowing his eyes and leaning closer – getting right in her face. "Your gut," he repeated, in an uncharacteristically nasty tone, "is that what told you to focus on your career and leave your dad in Oxford? Is that what told you to stay late that night? Is that what told you he'd be okay on his own? Oh, but that's just fine, isn't it, _Gracie_? Because it's not your fault your father burned himself to death!"

 _Smack!_

Although his feet had already started to move, he was way too late to catch the punch that sent Reid stumbling backwards, clutching his jaw. Her arm had moved like lightning!

He caught the other one, aware that the receptionists were scrambling over to intercede, but Pearce shrugged his hands away. Her movements tight and furious, a dark look on her face that Derek didn't like at all, she pushed past him and stalked away in the direction of the stairs.

"Pearce!" he shouted after her, but she ignored him, which – Derek reflected – was probably a good thing.

He recognised the behaviour: she was removing herself from the situation before she could make it worse. Not that it could be that much worse, given what she'd just done, but she hadn't followed through, or attacked Reid again, and Derek knew she was more than capable of knocking the kid flat if she wanted to.

No. He was still on his feet because she had chosen to stop after that first, reflexive hit. And that had been as much a surprise to her as to anyone. She probably hadn't even known she was doing it until her knuckles connected with his mandible.

 _That escalated pretty damn fast,_ he thought, and turned his attention to Reid, who was angrily trying to extricate himself from two worried receptionists who were offering to call various agencies, including an ambulance and the police.

"There's no need for that," said Derek, firmly planting himself in front of the kid. He pulled out his badge. "I'm a federal agent – I can take it from here, thanks."

 _And so are they_ , he thought. He'd have to tell Hotch, and then – what? Would Pearce be kicked off the team? Physical assault was an automatic censure and suspension, but Reid had been practically begging for it. The way he'd laid into her about her father like that, even knowing how much it was going to hurt her – and how untrue it was. He'd been trying as hard as he could to hurt her – and Pearce knew it.

If he'd said half that crap to him, Derek would have smacked him, too.

The badge and the tone made the receptionists retreat a few paces, but not too far. They were good at their jobs.

"Are you sure you're alright, sir?" asked a capable looking woman, who didn't flinched when Reid turned his scowl on her.

The second receptionist was marginally less flappable. "I'll fetch the first aid box," he said, and scurried off.

The first one tried again. "We saw all of it, if you need witnesses, and there's CCTV –"

"That won't be necessary, thank you," said Morgan, as politely as he could.

God this was a mess.

"Are you sure you don't want to press charges? That was quite a punch –"

"I'm _fine_ ," Reid growled, regaining some of the fire he'd had, moments before. "I'm not gonna press charges – and I _don't_ need first aid!"

Mollified, the two receptionists hurried back to their desks with some dignity, looking mildly affronted.

"Good," said Derek, glad that Reid still had the sense to know he'd deserved it.

The kid glared at him. "I don't have time."

"You okay?" Derek asked, ignoring the slightly disturbing venomous look he was being subjected to.

Reid rubbed his jaw, wincing. "She hit me."

Derek sighed. He really didn't want to take sides. Neither of his colleagues' behaviour had been ultimately acceptable. "You gave her good reason."

Looking exasperated, Reid waved in the direction of the stairs, where Pearce had lately disappeared. "That – she's – hah! She's always sticking her nose into other people's business," he scoffed, though he didn't entirely meet Derek's eyes, suggesting that he knew exactly how ridiculous that sounded.

He swung around and stalked towards the elevator, calling over his shoulder. "I just need a minute. Get Rossi – I've got an idea."

0o0

Derek heaved an enormous sigh, leaning against the warm stone of the hotel and ignoring everyone passing by. He'd just had a very uncomfortable phone call with Hotch, in which he'd tried to stress how freaked out Reid was about his dad and exactly what he'd said to Pearce to set her off. He'd been conscious of sounding like he was trying to make excuses, and doubtless Hotch had heard it in his voice.

Those two were in for a very unpleasant time of it in the near future. He grimaced. What else could he do?

If they'd had their fight in private, that might have been another thing, but in front of half a dozen guests and quite a few hotel staff? That was harder to live down, and all three of them should have been behaving themselves, representing the best interests of the Bureau.

He'd left Reid with Rossi, having given the senior agent a brief, but accurate, summary of what had happened, and the two of them had departed to find a hypnotherapist, for all the good that might do.

Pearce had yet to make an appearance, and Derek suspected if she had any sense she'd have turned her cell off. He was steeling himself to go in and drag her out of her room and into the bar for a heart to heart when he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye.

"Hey," he said, raising a hand in greeting. He lowered it, surprised, when he saw she had her case with her. "What are you doin'?"

She straightened, rather stiffly, and signalled to a waiting taxi, her face that careful police blank he'd seen sometimes when their cases were particularly dark. It didn't give a thing away, except how little she wanted to engage.

"Going home," she told him quietly. Her accent seemed more precise than usual, almost clipped, and Derek realised she was holding a lot in check. Anger still, but also hurt. "I don't think I can be much help."

"Nah." He shook his head. "We need you."

"No you don't," she said, primly, meeting his gaze with guarded eyes. "And Reid sure as hell doesn't want me here. Besides, if I stay, I'll only hit him again. It'll be better all round if I'm back in Washington."

Derek sighed again, watching her push her lightweight case into the back of the taxi. "I heard what he said to you," he told her, gently. "I woulda flipped, too."

Pearce raised an eyebrow and gave an irate little shake of her head that said 'Well, who wouldn't?'

"He didn't mean it."

She looked up at him then, and it occurred to him that maybe there really had been something going on between her and Reid, and that whatever it was had just ended rather definitively. Immediately, he was sorry that he and Rossi had pushed her; of the three of them, she'd been the one to see how badly wrong it would likely go.

She swallowed, measuring her words. "People say stupid stuff when they're pissed," she said, at last, "and he was trying to be as hurtful as possible to get rid of me, but there is a line and he waltzed right across it. And he knew he was doing it. That's… that's a lot harder to forgive."

Derek nodded, feeling awkward. They both looked at the floor for a moment, not knowing what to say.

"Reid…" He paused, licking his lips. "Reid's gone to a hypnotherapist. He – he knows the memories are there, he just can't get to them."

Pearce chewed the inside of her mouth for a moment, looking like she would have liked to say something, but she clamped her teeth shut and nodded at the taxi driver, who got in and started the engine.

"See you back in Quantico," said Derek, but Pearce didn't acknowledge the words.

He looked away, guessing that she knew there would be a disciplinary hearing waiting for her when she got home, or a suspension at the very least. Perhaps she didn't expect to see any of her team again. She'd done it before, cutting and running from whatever had driven her from London; perhaps she would do it again.

Pearce paused before getting in the car, one hand on the door. "Look after him," she said, without meeting his eyes.

Derek watched the taxi pull out. "You know I will," he murmured, and turned away.

0o0

Derek strode down the street, only just keeping pace with his younger friend.

Reid's mood, already pretty foul following his fight with Pearce, had reached new lows when – in his desperation for answers – he had inadvertently pushed his mother into a bit of an episode. He hadn't said a great deal about it, but from his pallor and the darkness around his eyes it had been a bad one.

It had, however, led to a revelation – at least as far as the kid was concerned.

"My mom told me we moved because she had a sense I was in danger," he said again.

Derek rolled his eyes. "She's not stable Reid, you can't put stock in what she says," he said, trying to be understanding about it and failing. "I don't need to tell you that."

"And I don't need to tell you that this is _textbook_ ," Reid shot back. "Father reroutes compulsion to molest away from his own son to a surrogate!"

He was clearly so angry that his mind was operating in an alternate universe right now. Derek shook his head. "The woman thought Riley Jenkins was an imaginary friend until you told her otherwise."

"Her mind's way of suppressing memories she doesn't want to face," Reid dismissed.

"You're losin' objectivity here, kid," Derek warned him.

"Oh look, I'm not trying to say I know what happened!" he snapped, stopping. "Or how my dad's involved, Morgan, but my dad's _involved!_ "

"Like you told Pearce what happened?" Derek asked, pointedly.

Reid looked away, stung. "That's completely different," he said, one hand going unconsciously to his bruised jaw.

"Oh really? Cause I heard what you said to her, man –"

" _She hit me!_ "

" _I_ woulda hit you. You were outta line," Derek chided.

He had obviously touched a nerve. "You know what, that's just none of your –"

Reid stopped, staring at a point somewhere behind Derek, who turned and followed his gaze. Lou Jenkins was just leaving the North Las Vegas Police Department, as bold as brass. The pair of them watched as he noticed them, looked momentarily flustered and then gave them a tight nod of acknowledgment before disappearing into the foot traffic on the street.

Reid frowned, mystified and a little derailed. "What's _he_ doing here?"

0o0

Grace stepped off the plane and stretched, relieved to be able to move again.

She had left Las Vegas in the late morning, on the first flight she could, and now the day was drawing into evening. She yawned and wandered towards the luggage carousel, determinedly not thinking about anything negative, like losing a friend or a lover, or possibly also her job and the life she had built in Quantico.

Her phone, when she turned it back on, buzzed madly for a few minutes in her pocket. Arms crossed, she let it settle for a minute or two before taking it out.

Astonishingly, there was no immediate summons from Hotch, for which she was grateful, or a garbled apology from Reid, which she had been prepared to delete without reading. There were about fourteen texts from Morgan, which were characteristically brief, like old telegrams.

She scrolled down the list and read them back in order: _Hypnotist agreed.; Reid remembered his dad burning clothes.; Gary Michaels deceased.; Jenkins at P.D.; Sheriff being obstructive.; Man, Reid is PISSED.; William Reid hiding something.; Can't get warrant.; Mrs R is here…; It wasn't the Reids.; Michaels killed Riley. Arrested Lou Jenkins for murder of Michaels._

She raised her eyebrows. So he had been hiding something.

 _Heading home._ _Reid okay._

Angrily, Grace stuffed the phone back into her pocket, glad that it had been resolved, but still far too pissed off to be properly happy. Also, her hand really bloody hurt.

She glared at the luggage carousel.

It had been a long time since she'd hit anyone, even in the line of duty, and longer still since she'd lost it like that. She had thought she had left that part of herself back in the UK, but now, flexing slightly bruised fingers, she had to face the fact that anger and stupidity had always been a part of her, and always would be.

If only he hadn't pushed her like that…

She shook her head in self-disgust. She couldn't blame this on him, though it would probably be a long time before she stopped being angry with him.

She checked the time on her father's pocket watch. Half past six. Theoretically, she didn't need to go to work now until the next morning. She could head home, open a bottle of wine and turn off all electronic communication.

 _And brood over whether I still have a job or not,_ she added, grumpily.

No. It would be better to have something to do. Better to be busy.

As if it had heard her, her phone buzzed again; this time it was Garcia.

"Hey," she said wearily, but her friend didn't seem to have heard her.

" _You've landed! I tried to call you before, but obviously you were still airborne and I couldn't get through. Are you through security yet? Did you get your luggage? Are you in a cab?"_

She said all of this very fast.

"Whoa, whoa Garcia, slow down!" said Grace, startled. "What's wrong?"

To her surprise, Garcia laughed. _"Nothing's wrong! That is, everything's right! More than right!"_

"Penelope…" Grace murmured, wondering whether she needed to have a word with her slightly mad friend about her caffeine consumption.

" _JJ's gone into labour!"_

Grace felt her mouth fall open. "What? I thought she was due next month!"

" _So did she! I guess the baby's eager to meet the world!"_

"Is –" Grace's heart constricted for a brief, slightly breathless moment. "Are they okay?"

" _The doctors say they're fine – she's been in labour for a few hours now, since before you – um – left Vegas."_ She paused for exactly long enough for Grace to guess that the entire team knew about the punch up in the lobby. _"We're all at the hospital!"_

"I'll meet you there in about an hour," Grace promised, absently pressing a hand to her chest, where her heart was fluttering like a frightened bird.

0o0

Hotch was pacing, as if he was JJ's dad.

It was several hours later, getting on for midnight, but none of the team had felt the need to leave. They'd taken Will (who was a basket of nerves) down to the restaurant for dinner and then sent him back up again for the last bit, before milling around and playing on their phones, waiting for the good news.

It was weird. Very weird. They were behaving like a proper family, and it tickled Grace a little – a feeling she would have enjoyed somewhat more if she knew, one way or another, whether she would be staying a part of it.

Hotch had met her eye when she'd arrived with the blanket she'd made for the baby and muttered "Tomorrow," in an undertone. She had understood that this was merely a stay of execution. No one wanted to ruin things for JJ and Will, especially not on account of a stupid punch thrown by a stupid Brit.

She was having a hard time, it being a maternity ward, but she was damned if she was going to let that come out. No one needed to think of loss on a day like this.

She was loath to admit it, but a large part of her missed Reid's reassuring presence, no matter how much she hated him right now.

They all looked up when the doors sprang open and Will burst out, smiling so widely that it looked like the top of his head might fall off. "He's here!"

0o0

It had been a long, somewhat unexpected day.

Given that her due date was actually three weeks off, she had ignored the initial contractions of her labour, until it had become obvious what was happening. Still, the midwife had told her that she and her baby were doing fine, and that was good enough for her.

She'd dispatched Will to give the team the good news, because she knew there was nowhere else they would want to be right now (and they called themselves profilers!) and let the midwife clean her up.

Now every member of the team currently in Virginia were clustered around JJ's bed, all grinning like idiots. Even Grace, who seemed to have flown back ahead of the boys, and if her smile was a little more reserved, no one commented.

"Look at that, you made a tiny human," said their resident Brit, cheerfully.

"Oh, Will he looks just like you!" Garcia exclaimed.

"Well, let's hope he grows outta that," Will quipped, unable to keep the grin off his face.

"Just as long as he doesn't inherit the accent," Emily teased, and he laughed.

There was a gentle knock on the door. "Got room for one more in here?" asked Reid, wandering in.

"Spence, hi!" JJ said, happy to see him home and considerably less tense.

"Welcome back," said Hotch.

Reid laughed awkwardly and looked at Henry. "Wow, congratulations!" He shook Will's hand.

"Thank you," said Will.

JJ ran her eyes over her friend's tired frame: the slept-in clothes, the slightly haunted look in his eyes, the darkly blooming bruise spreading over his jaw. "How is it that I just went through fifteen hours of labour and you look worse than I do?" she asked.

"Don't be ridiculous," Reid told her. "You look beautiful."

JJ smiled, flattered, and looked at her partner, who took the hint. "Well, I could sure use some coffee," said Will, stretching. "Anybody else?"

Hotch nodded. "Sure."

"Great," Will exclaimed, giving Reid a man hug on the way past.

"I'm probably going to head," said Gr and gave JJ a wave. "Got a bad headache on the plane."

She practically ran out of the room, which was not lost on JJ; glancing up at Reid, she saw him stiffen noticeably.

 _Well, what the heck is that about?_

"You okay?" JJ asked, when the others had gone. She nodded at the impressive bruise on his face.

He raised his hand halfway to it and then changed his mind. "Wow – yeah!" he assured her, looking instead at the tiny baby wriggling and fussing in her arms. "You?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you sure?" JJ asked, deciding that further investigation could wait for another day. "'Cause there's something I've been meaning to ask you, but I – it can wait."

Reid met her eyes, looking puzzled. "What is it?"

"Will and I were talking, and um… we want you to be Henry's godfather."

He gasped. Shock and joy, and then confusion crossed his expressive face in quick succession. "Ha," he swallowed. "I don't even – I don't know –"

"Here," said JJ quickly, recognising the signs of stunned panic. "Do you wanna hold him?"

"Um –"

"It's okay, here you go." She passed Henry over to him before he could argue himself out of it. "There – watch his head."

"Um – wow," he breathed, suddenly smiling. "Hi henry!"

"Now, if anything should happen to us it's up to you and Garcia to make sure this boy gets into Yale," JJ told him gently.

Reid couldn't take his eyes off the baby – it was pretty obvious that like JJ herself, he was already smitten. "Whoo," he cooed. "Yale? Yale. Do you wanna go to Yale, Henry? That was your godfather's safety school."

JJ chuckled, pleased at how gentle he was being.

"Don't worry – I can get you into Caltech with one phone call," he whispered, and broke into a happy smile.


	10. Masterpiece

**Essential listening: Da Vinci, by Weezer**

0o0

Grace took her time getting to work that morning.

She set off early, so that it didn't make her late (and she had been largely unable to sleep, in any case), and got off the AMTRACK two stations early just to walk the rest of the way. It was a pleasant day, and the four mile trek up to Quantico was more or less flat. She didn't walk it fast, settling herself in instead with a long gait so she didn't work up too much of a sweat.

It wouldn't do to arrive looking out of sorts. Not today.

She had made a quiet exit from the hospital the night before, and her head still felt a little loud. Henry Lamontagne-Jareau had been tiny and perfect, and as happy she was for Will and JJ, it had battered her heart somewhat.

Still, it wasn't as if she didn't have experience at keeping things to herself, or weathering the looks co-workers gave you when they suspected you were a few sandwiches short of a picnic.

That was part of the reason she had wanted to get in early.

Even after her walk, she was only the second person in, and the bullpen was dark and quiet. There was a light on in Hotch's office, and she paused at the door of the large room for a moment, taking it in, trying to memorise it in case this was the last time she saw it.

It had begun to feel a lot like home over the past couple of years.

Hotch looked up as she opened the glass door, even though it hadn't made a noise. He had obviously been waiting for her. Grace met his gaze and walked slowly through the desks towards his office, feeling as if she were climbing her own scaffold. The sensation was disturbingly familiar.

The ache she'd built up on her walk helped to ground her, so she didn't even bother dropping her bag at her desk. She wasn't even totally sure it still was hers.

"Sit down," said Hotch, by way of greeting.

Grace did what she was told, reflexively maintaining a professionally blank expression. Hotch's didn't give much away either, though something about the tone of his voice expressed disappointment.

With deliberate care, he put his pen down and subjected her to one of his patented hard stares.

"You've served in a position where you had responsibility for others, yes?"

Surprised, Grace nodded.

"What would you do if a subordinate had sucker punched a colleague?"

Grace took a breath. "I would give them a month's suspension, pending investigation, and probably throw them off the team. They would have betrayed my trust – and that of their colleagues." She swallowed. "And they should be ashamed."

There was a moment of tense silence. Grace stared at the picture of Jack above Hotch's right shoulder, trying to stay calm and steady.

"Would it be a different manner if they were provoked?" Hotch asked.

Grace allowed herself to look at him, a little confused. Why was he being so circumspect?

"I – I suppose it would depend on the provocation," she said, warily. "But I would also say that that is no excuse for hurting someone."

Hotch gazed at her for a full, unnerving minute and then sighed. "I don't think, given what may have been said to that subordinate, that suspension would be entirely fair, in this… hypothetical instance."

Grace stared at him, feeling that her boss might well have gone crazy. He couldn't ignore an assault on one of his team, surely?

"I have always given this team a certain amount of latitude," he said carefully, "and I have only seldom been made to regret it."

Grace narrowed her eyes at that, wondering what other indiscretions he had kept to himself over the years. She thought about the mysterious Elle, and the sad way Garcia spoke about her when her guard was down. She was the only one who did, these days.

"I'm one agent short at the moment, though Agent Todd seems to be a reasonable fit until JJ goes back. We have cases coming in all the time – I can't afford to have anyone out just now," he said, picking his words with care. "I won't formally reprimand you for what happened in Las Vegas as long as it doesn't happen ever again. It does, and you're out of here for good."

Swallowing hard, Grace nodded.

Hotch nodded too, and picked up a file. Grace took this as her cue to leave. She was almost at the door when he spoke again, looking down at the open paperwork.

"You told me once that I could trust you," he said, and looked up. "Don't make me regret it."

She nodded again, not trusting herself to speak, and walked quickly down the steps, feeling oddly dizzy.

0o0

"Yeah, but you gotta admit, American football is more excitin' than rugby," Morgan argued, pulling a face.

Grace snorted derisively.

What had started out as a harmless discussion of the differences in British and American school system had somehow devolved into an intense argument over the merits of various sports. It felt good to bicker about something inconsequential. In the couple of weeks since JJ had given birth, Grace had felt utterly disconnected, running through old casework instead of sleeping and avoiding social situations.

She was withdrawing from them, and she knew it. It was a survival mechanism. Her discussion with Hotch should have given her some comfort, but it had felt to Grace a lot more like a stay of execution, and she preferred to insulate herself from the pain of eventually leaving.

Besides, violence was the worst possible response she could have made, and she hated herself for it.

Given their line of work, this emotional turmoil had not gone unnoticed amongst her co-workers, and almost every one of them had taken it upon themselves to force her to engage. Prentiss and Garcia had taken her out for cocktails, Rossi had invited her out for dinner, Hotch had asked her to watch Jack while he put together some new furniture for his room in the house they only shared every other weekend and Morgan had simply shown up the night before with a bag full of snacks and a pizza and insisted that they watch the Chicago Bears play the Minnesota Vikings.

The only people who hadn't engaged in this not-so-subtle manipulation were Jordan Todd (who didn't know her yet), JJ (who was pretty busy with her infant son) and… Reid.

That part of her that wasn't still furious with him hoped they were doing the same for him.

"In what universe?" she scoffed. "American football is obviously a highly skilled sport, but really, what possessed you people to think that stopping the match every five minutes to swap players and have a chat constituted 'excitement'?"

"Nah, it's an integral part of the game." Morgan shook his head, managing to express his astonishment at her preference and his affection for her weirdness all at once. "Side changes make it clear who's in play – you know, attack and defence?"

"Why do you need only one in play?" Grace asked. "Most team sports have both happening at once. I don't get why you need a whole other team for that."

"It's to keep them fresher."

"It's a sport! They're athletes! They ought to be able to keep going for the whole match without a rest every few minutes."

That made Morgan laugh, at least. "It's a whole different set of muscles."

"Rugby players manage it."

It was Morgan's turn to scoff. "You and your rugby. I don't get it," he complained. "What's the point of forming a scrum when the ball is underneath them all?"

"Getting the ball to go where you want it mid-scrum is a fine skill," Grace protested.

"Yeah well, at least in American football you have an idea of where the ball is moving to because you can see the thing."

"You can see the ball in rugby, too," Grace pointed out, as they got into the lift. "It's not invisible – and they're pretty much the same size and colour, give or take."

"Okay, smartass, what about the difference between a quarterback and a line-backer? The physicality's totally different."

"You get a range in rugby, too," she told him. "It's just everyone has thighs like tree trunks and shoulders like battering rams. And don't even get me started on all that ridiculous padding."

Morgan snorted again, and both of them smiled, happy in the knowledge that neither of them was really serious about the argument, and that it didn't really matter.

They stepped out of the lift and nearly ran into Agent Anderson, who was – as usual – prowling the corridors on mysterious errands of his own.

"Oh, hey Anderson. What do you think? American football or rugby?" Morgan asked.

Anderson stared at him for a moment, nonplussed. "Uh… I've never watched rugby."

Morgan turned to Grace with a grin. "Told you."

"Uh, Pearce, have you read the Franklin report?" Anderson asked.

"This morning," Grace replied, shaking her head at Morgan. "Just because someone hasn't seen something doesn't mean it's automatically not as good."

"You keep telling yourself that," said Morgan.

"There's a couple of things I need to go over with you," said Anderson. "You got a minute?"

"Sure."

Out of her eye, she watched Morgan sidle over to JJ's office, currently occupied by Jordan Todd and – from the sound of it – a very unhappy detective from out of state.

Anderson's eyes had wandered in that direction, too, and he smirked at her. Todd was very beautiful, and it was no secret that Derek Morgan had the hots for her. It looked like he'd have the opportunity to help her out – though this being Morgan he would have done it for anyone in the building, regardless of whether or not he fancied them.

Even from across the hall, Todd looked particularly harassed. There were stacks of files a foot deep on every surface in the office. It looked a little like she'd tried to build a wall out of them in front of her. Opposite her sat a desperate and frustrated detective. From the looks of things, their meeting had already got out of hand.

Grace turned her attention to Anderson's queries, eavesdropping as she did so.

"I'm gonna present this to the team, and if they're interested, I'll call you," said Todd, and both Grace and Anderson (who was also listening in) winced.

"If the team is 'interested'?" the Detective repeated.

"It's not a matter of interest," Todd said hurriedly, but the damage had already been done.

The detective got to his feet. "You just said 'interested'," he said, snatching back the file he had brought with him.

"Detective – that's not quite what I meant –" Todd stuttered.

"Is it that there's only one victim and not enough bodies for you?" he asked, no longer prepared to listen.

"Not at all!"

"My victim's not covered in peanut butter and decapitated?"

"They only need to be certain that they can help," Todd told him, sounding desperate.

"They sure as hell couldn't hurt!" he snapped, getting in her face.

"That's actually not true, sir," said Morgan smoothly, walking in. It shut the detective down straight away, mostly out of confusion. "To take focus away from your investigation to build a profile could be a waste of your time and resources if you're already on the right track."

"A girl's been dead three months –"

"And you feel like if you don't do somethin' to help her, no one will," Morgan guessed.

The detective shifted from foot to foot, obviously frustrated. Someone was speaking his language now, however. "Her mom calls me three times a day."

"I've been there," Morgan told him. "Chicago P.D. trust me, I get it. If there is something we can do to help you, we will."

The detective sighed, still frustrated, but mollified at least. "My cell number's on the report," he said, reluctantly handing Morgan the file.

"I'm Supervisory Special Agent Derek Morgan," he said, as the detective turns to leave, still in high dudgeon. "I'll call you personally."

He offered his hand to shake, but the other didn't take it. "We'll see."

The detective stalked out, past Anderson and Grace, and went to glare at the lift. Over Anderson's shoulder Grace could see him repeatedly punching the button. The two agents had given up all pretence of conversation now; the Franklin file could wait. This was far more interesting – sometimes the sanity of the BAU depended entirely on distracting themselves with office gossip.

The whole situation could have been avoided if Todd hadn't used the wrong word, Grace reflected. It was so hard teaching your brain not to say slightly the wrong thing, though. People were so apt to misinterpret everything, and in Counter Terrorism it was rare for things to be so personal. Maybe it was time for some friendly advice – this job was hard enough without a bit of support now and then.

Obviously, Morgan had had the same idea. "You really have to be careful how you phrase things," he began, but she interrupted, angrily.

"What was that?"

 _What was what?_ Grace thought. _He was just helping you out._

Morgan stared at her, taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"'I'll call you personally?'" Todd retorted. " _I'm_ the liaison!"

Grace and Anderson shared a surprised, mildly appalled look. Anderson gave a low whistle and she nodded. This was not the way to make new friends.

 _Not that I'm doing so well in that department, lately,_ she reminded herself.

Morgan stared at her, clearly unprepared for this level of venom. "You can call him yourse-"

"And you didn't have to come in here and take over my consultation like that!" she snapped, practically ripping the file out of Morgan's hands.

"It was your first solo, I was simply tryin' to help," Morgan said, affronted.

"Well, from now on, _Supervisory_ Special Agent Morgan, if I need your help, I'll ask," Todd informed him, rather acidly.

"You're welcome," Morgan said. "Agent Todd."

He made his way back over to Grace, and Anderson immediately gave a masterful performance of someone who had just finished a frank discussion of the Franklin case, and departed with his dignity intact.

It didn't fool Morgan for a moment. "What the hell was that about?" he asked.

There was no use pretending she hadn't heard. Anyone in the corridor would've.

"I was only tryin' to help…"

Grace shrugged. "She's new and she feels like you trod on her feet in there. She wants to handle it by herself, and it probably seemed like you didn't think she could cope," Grace explained. "She's frustrated. This is a lot different to her old unit – and JJ barely had time to begin her training before Henry decided to put in an appearance."

"But I –"

"I know, you were only trying to help," said Grace, briskly. "Come on, we've got two cases to review by lunch."

0o0

Spencer followed Rossi out of the lecture theatre and shook hands with a few students who had wanted to question them more carefully or thank them for the talk.

He hated recruitment talks. He was patently bad at them, and he always managed to make a fool out of himself somehow. It was the same with any presentation, really. His genius didn't stretch to public speaking and it seemed like the rest of the world had a significantly different sense of humour to him.

Still, it was good to be back in a university again – especially without a stack of bodies somewhere nearby. Academic settings were always a source of comfort, as long as no one asked him to speak.

Today's talk could have gone better, he decided, but at least Rossi was there to iron out the wrinkles.

Waiting for the senior agent to wrap up a conversation with a student not much younger than himself, he rubbed his chin. There was still the faint outline of a bruise there, and it ached a little when he talked.

You could say what you liked about Grace bloody Pearce (and he had, at length, when he and Prentiss had gone out for lunch the other day) she had a mean uppercut. It had felt, briefly, like he'd been punched by a bear.

They set off along the corridor.

"You _do_ know we want them to actually join the Bureau?" Rossi asked, and Spencer glanced at him, not sure whether he was being teased or not.

He grimaced; it was probably a reference to the joke he'd told. Even _he_ had felt that one die a death. "What?" he asked. "Yeah."

Rossi shook his head. "We need them to think it's a cool place to work."

"No, I understand that," Spencer responded.

Rossi, walking backwards now, was obviously quite exasperated. "Existentialism?"

"Existentialism – uh…"

Spencer turned, distracted, to nod politely at a young female college student who seemed bent on telling him how good a seminar it was.

Perhaps she had attended a different one.

"Uh – hi – hi…" he stammered, then looked back at Rossi, nonplussed. "That was a funny joke, "What do you mean?"

"Yeah, to Sigmund Freud," Rossi scoffed.

"I tell them they shouldn't send me on these things and they keep sending me," he declared, frustrated. He just wasn't good at presenting a 'cool' outlook to people. "I don't know why."

They paused at the top of the stairs.

"Because you're young," Rossi told him.

"Young or Jung?" Spencer quipped, and his friend rolled his eyes.

"Dr Reid."

They both turned to find a middle-aged man with long, white hair and a perfectly trimmed moustache following them. He was wearing a suit and delicate little gold-rimmed glasses (octagonal, Spencer noted), and he looked like he might be a lecturer.

"Wouldn't they sit in the dark and hope that the bulb decided to light again?" he said.

He spoke softly, like someone who worked in a library.

"Excuse me?" Spencer asked, puzzled.

"An existentialist," said the man, tapping his goatee with one finger, "would never change the bulb. He would simply allow the darkness to exist."

Cottoning on, Spencer nodded, impressed. "Yeah, that's pretty good," he said, amused.

They set off again, and this time the guy came with, like he was insinuating himself into their group. "I'm Professor Rothchild," he said, in that same, quiet tone. "It was a brilliant presentation – brilliant. You're a remarkably effective recruitment tool. The FBI is very lucky to have you."

"Um thank – thank you for saying that," said Spencer, flattered.

Rossi checked his watch rather pointedly; they had cases to assess back at Quantico.

"May I show you something?" Professor Rothchild enquired.

"Uh –" He hesitated, glancing at Rossi because he recognised the impatient body language. "Of course."

He didn't want to be rude.

The Professor handed him a black, cloth covered folder – almost a portfolio. "It's all right here."

Somewhere at the back of his mind – and for no reason he could pinpoint – the hair on the back of Spencer's neck began to stand up. There was just something about this guy that was a little off.

Careful not to drop it, Spencer took out some high quality A4 pictures. They had been printed on good paper and the inks used were top notch, but that wasn't what caught his attention. No. The subject was a woman in abject distress, throwing her hand up at the camera. Spencer frowned. In the next image she was screaming into the camera, and the next…

"I don't understand," he said, flicking through increasingly horrifying images. They were all indistinct, hard to make out. "What are – what are these?"

His mind switched gear – suddenly that little prickle in the back of his neck made more sense. He ran his eyes over the Professor, taking in more about the neat little guy, in case this was a confession.

"Seven homicide victims," said Rothchild, in a quiet, clipped voice. Everything about him was clipped, somehow. Tidy. Even the way he held himself.

"Homicide?" Rossi asked, no longer impatient. He, too, was paying a great deal of attention to the Professor.

"Seven women," said Rothchild. "Their bodies have never been found. Not a fingernail, not a hair fibre. Acid is a very tidy way of disposing of something," he continued, taking the photos back.

Rossi exchanged a look with Spencer. "Acid?"

Maybe this _was_ a confession.

Spencer looked hard at him. "Are you saying that you killed these women?"

The man didn't look up. Instead, he approached the bannister of the stairs. "There is still time to save the others, though."

Spencer met Rossi's eyes, concerned. "Others?" Rossi asked.

"Five more," Professor Rothchild told them.

"What do you mean?" Spencer prompted.

They might be able to get more out of him, if they could keep him talking.

Rothchild checked his watch, obviously enjoying the pantomime. "In a bit less than nine hours, five other people are going to be dead – unless you can find a way to save them."

To underline his words, he threw all the photos down the stairs, in a very camp sort of way. They watched them cascade through the air for a moment before Rossi put a hand on the Professor's shoulder. He's not making any kind of move to get away, but you could never be too careful.

Anyone crazy enough to kill multiple women and then hand themselves in to the FBI for fun was capable of almost anything.

Spencer looked at him again; everything about him was smug. He already believed he had won.

0o0

" _Let us consider that we are all insane. It will explain us to each other. It will unriddle many riddles."_

 _Mark Twain_

0o0

Aaron was working steadily through the stack of files on his desk, finishing up admin, making sure cases were strong and resources were being deployed properly.

By BAU standards, it had been relatively quiet for the last few days, and the team had been able to use their time to catch up with the thousands of case reviews that came through their office every year. Several of them had managed to conduct or attend various seminars, including the one Rossi and Reid had been sent to that morning. It was a pleasant change of pace, despite the subject matter, and it had allowed all of them to relax a little, particularly given how weird it was without JJ around.

And they needed it. Some days it seemed like his entire team was one bad day away from being kicked out of the Bureau. They had largely been behaving themselves, though it was still a bit of a trial to be in the same room as Reid and Pearce. They currently had a bit of a problem with professionalism in the face of some very bruised feelings, and Aaron had taken to separating them as often as he could, for the sake of everyone's sanity. Not that he wanted to treat them any differently – but he worried about them.

Spencer Reid had had it tough, and the way Pearce had lost her father had evidently taken its toll. In lieu of the mutual support they'd given each other since her arrival in the US, they both seemed a little lost.

But with Reid at the recruitment seminar and Pearce working through case reviews with Morgan, the morning had been relatively stress-free.

So he was wholly unprepared when Jordan Todd stormed through his open door, practically spitting fire.

"You're my boss, correct?" she demanded, without so much as a hello.

Aaron stared at her for a moment, nonplussed. "Excuse me?"

"I report to you?" she clarified, angrily.

"That's right," he confirmed. He tilted his head, looking at his new, temporary agent somewhat askance. It didn't take a profiler to see that she was fuming – the question was why.

"Has my job performance been to your satisfaction, sir?" Todd demanded.

"It seems fine," he said, wincing slightly.

It _had_ seemed fine, but now he was a little less certain of that. Who ran into their boss's office and basically yelled questions at them? Something had obviously got her rattled.

"And if it weren't to your satisfaction, you'd tell me?"

"I can promise you that," Aaron said, with some concern.

"Because, I _can_ do this job!"

"I'm sorry," said Aaron, feeling he was missing an essential part of this conversation. "Has someone suggested that you can't?"

" _Have_ they?" Todd asked, her body language screaming that this was a challenge and he'd better damn well tell her.

"Not to me," he said, thoughtfully.

"Thank you sir." She turned and hurried off, nearly knocking Prentiss down on her way out.

"Hey –" Prentiss stared after her.

Aaron shook his head. The BAU did things to people – especially when they were new.

"What's wrong with Agent Todd?" he asked, hoping Prentiss could shed some light on the matter.

Sadly, she could not. "I haven't really spent a lot of time with her," she said, looking troubled.

"Well, something's bothering her."

"I'll keep an eye on her," said Prentiss. "You wanted to see me?"

"Yes – uh – the Houston case," Aaron said, reaching for the file as he remembered why he'd asked her in in the first place. "I'm missing the coroner's supplemental for victim three," he said, indicating the post it note he'd stuck to the outside of the case file.

"That's supposed to come in this afternoon…" she trailed off, narrowing her eyes. "I just turned that in last night," she remarked. "When do you sleep?"

"Get me the supplemental so I can close the case," he instructed, ignoring the question because the answer was, basically, 'on the jet, two days ago'.

"Yes sir," she said, heading for the door.

"Thank you."

No sooner had she left the room, his telephone rang. Sighing, he answered it; clearing it was a day of interruptions. "Hey Dave."

Rossi starting talking without even saying hello, which was always a bad sign. "Reid and I were just approached by some guy here, with photos of what he claims are seven women he killed," he said, and Aaron put down his pen, listening intently. "His pictures have all been manipulated in some way so that you can't really see what they are."

"But he said he killed them?" Aaron asked.

"Seven women," Rossi agreed. "So far."

"So far?"

Aaron's heart began to beat faster; instinct told him that this one was going to be far from straightforward.

"There are five more live victims somewhere that we can save in nine hours," Rossi explained tersely.

"Is this guy for real, Dave? Is he a confessor, a wannabe?"

"I don't think so Hotch, I get a hit off of him. Somethin' hinky. I'm bringin' him in."


	11. Mind Games

**Essential listening: Disappear, by Arguments**

0o0

From the front seat of Rossi's car, Spencer kept one eye on their prisoner.

His position allowed him to obliquely watch the professor, but turn away when he needed to think; not what you might call ideal, from a behavioural point of view, but good enough until they got back to the BAU.

He didn't seem nervous, nor particularly reserved. What Spencer mostly read from his tone and his body language was an intense feeling of smugness.

"So, you said you're a professor at Strayer?" Spencer asked, looking back.

"No."

He said it almost ponderously, looking out of the window as if the interaction bored him.

"You didn't?"

"No."

Again, his response was disinterested, as if everyone was beneath him.

 _God complex_ , Spencer thought, mentally categorising the man.

"I mean, you did introduce yourself as Professor Rothchild, right?"

"Your degree in philosophy surprises me, Doctor Reid," he remarked, as if Spencer hadn't spoken. "It doesn't fit with mathematics and engineering."

Spencer shrugged. "I kinda like it because there're no right or wrong answers."

Rothchild raised an eyebrow. "Without right or wrong, how would we recognise per _fec_ tion?"

There was something about the way he said that word: perfection. It obviously meant a great deal to him. Certainly, Spencer suspected he felt it held a deeper meaning for him than for everyone else.

 _He seriously enjoys the sound of his own voice,_ Spencer thought. _Narcissism, and something else… anger? Carefully contained, but just there on the edges. Anger with what though – authority? The establishment? Women? Perfection?_

"Is this fun for you?" Rossi asked, from the driver's seat.

He sounded calm, but a little impatient, which was generally the best way to respond to someone who was so obviously trying to play you.

"Excuse me?"

"Are you having fun?" Rossi asked again.

Rothchild looked out of the window again. "It's quite a bit more complicated than that."

"What do you mean?"

He sniffed. "You wouldn't understand."

 _So he's playing us off against each other,_ Spencer thought _. Okay. That's something we can use._

"Try me," Rossi encouraged.

"I've read your books, David."

Unseen, Spencer raised an eyebrow at that. _So I'm 'Doctor Reid' and he's 'David' – now, is he trying to make me feel flattered and important and Rossi feel belittled, or is he taking Rossi into his confidence and excluding me?_

Rothchild stroked the sides of his spectacles as he continued. "You don't have the intellectual capacity to grasp what's going on here."

 _Ah._

The corners of Rossi's mouth turned upwards. That was a cheap shot – and this guy didn't know it. "If you're tryin' to piss me off, it's not going to work," he told him. "But if you killed seven women without leaving a trace of evidence, why turn yourself in?"

Spencer turned back, watching the man's reaction.

"Imagine what the world would have missed if da Vinci never showed his work," remarked the Professor, sounding bored.

Rossi met Spencer's eyes and they shared a mutual expression that said, 'Oh God, really? 'Cause that's _so_ original.'

0o0

Emily was heading through the corridor where JJ's office was when she remembered her promise to Hotch. Morgan had been grumpy all morning because of Todd's rebuff and Grace had filled her in on the consultation that had got out of hand. It couldn't be easy coming into a team like this, particularly without the full complement of training.

Mindful of how tense the woman had seemed earlier she decided to go with the direct approach. "Hey, how's it going?" she asked, sticking her head around the door.

"Why?" Todd asked, instantly. Her tone was acid, but her body language was that of someone dealing with a lot of unexpected stress.

"Um… I – it's just a question," said Emily, surprised at the venom there.

Todd turned to look at her; she looked exhausted. "I'm sorry, I just…"

Emily shook her head to show that she hadn't taken offence, and shut the door. "Um, Jordan, as one of the last people to join this team, I know how overwhelming all of this can be. It really does get easier."

Todd smiled, relaxing a little, so Emily continued with a grin. "I'm not exactly sure if that's a good thing, though."

The temporary media liaison looked a little sheepish, like she'd only just realised what an ass she'd been making of herself. "I'm going to manifest happiness and calm for the rest of the day."

Emily laughed. "Happiness and calm. At the BAU. That's – good luck with that!" She opened the door to leave, pleased she had made Todd smile, at least.

"Oh, did you need something?"

"Oh yeah, um," said Emily, fabricating wildly. "I'm waiting for a supplemental from the Houston Field Office so I can close out a report. "If you could just let me know when it gets here?"

"An internal report wouldn't come through me," said Todd, narrowing her eyes

Emily pretended to look surprised. "Really…"

Fortunately, Todd appeared to be calmer than she had been that morning and she started to smile again; encouraged, Emily followed suit.

"Thanks for checking up on me."

"Yeah, okay," said Emily, amused at her own lack of thought. "Well, if you need anything, I'm around."

0o0

Grace put the finishing touches to the case review she and Morgan had been working on and deposited it on the 'out' tray. Although everyone was tense following Rossi's phone call, there was realistically nothing they could do until the unsub (well, the subject, in this instance) arrived or someone was reported missing. She, Prentiss and Morgan had spent the forty-five minutes since the alarm was raised making sure there was nothing that would get in the way once the others got in.

They had had one eye on the news all morning. Grace grabbed the remote and turned it up when the banner switched to _'Breaking News'_.

" _Earlier this morning, police were contacted and informed that Kaylee Robinson, who ran a day care centre out of her home had been abducted along with four children,"_ said the host, in a very sober manner.

Morgan and Pretniss, who had both been on calls, dropped their ear pieces as the reporter continued: _"When a parent arrived at 9.30 this morning to drop off her child, she discovered the door –"_

"What's going on?" Reid asked, and Grace looked up to discover he was right behind her.

When had he developed ninja powers?

She shifted her weight and looked past him, at the neat, smug looking man he and Rossi had brought in "I think there's someone here who has an idea," she muttered.

"He said there were five more victims we could save?" Hotch queried, coming out of his office at some speed.

"A woman was abducted this morning in Loretto, Virginia," said Todd, appearing with a press release she must have wrung out of the reporters as soon as the story had gone to air. "She runs a home day care centre. She had four children with her."

"They're all missing," Prentiss added.

"All five," said Morgan.

"Are those the five more?" Rossi asked the man, who smirked, meeting his gaze with an air of satisfaction.

"Are you pissed off yet, David?"

0o0

Grace stood at the window of the interview room, watching Rossi, Morgan and their subject, 'Professor' Rothchild, settle in. His arrogance was almost palpable. She couldn't imagine the man had too many friends, give his obvious narcissism, which was probably why he was so angry.

 _Seven women… and now one more, and four kids._

"He doesn't go for anyone stronger than or equal to himself," she reflected.

"Probably because he believes there _is_ no one equal to himself," Reid, who was standing about as far away from Grace as he could physically get, remarked. "Like someone else I could mention," he added under his breath.

Grace rolled her eyes, but declined to comment; they were too busy. Hotch, who was between the two of them, cleared his throat.

"He was referencing da Vinci in the car," Reid told them, picking up on the unspoken admonishment.

"He thinks he's an artist," said Grace, disgusted.

In the interview room, Morgan was uncuffing Rothchild.

"It's not your fault, you know. Your IQ is your IQ," Rothchild commiserated. "It's not education, David. It's genetics."

The three agents watched as Morgan removed his coat to search him. Rossi paused, noticing a gold Art Deco looking pendant. What's this?"

"I need to explain what a pendant is?" Professor Rothchild asked, aloof.

"What does it mean?" Rossi asked again. He was clearly getting tired of the smug attitude.

"Mean? Oh…" Rothchild shrugged. "It's just something I found at a fayre."

"Sit down," said Rossi.

"You have the right to remain silent," recited Morgan, leaning on the table. "Anything you say can and will be used against you. You have the right to have an attorney present. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. "Do you understand your rights?"

Rothchild started talking even before Morgan had finished, displaying his utter contempt for authority.

 _And his utter fixation on Rossi,_ Grace thought.

"Genetics is the key to everything, David. If you're not born with an IQ –"

Morgan, who had had enough of this obstructive grandstanding, slapped his hand onto the table to get the man's attention. "Do you," he repeated, "understand your rights?"

"Perfectly," the Professor replied smugly. "I can have a lawyer. No thank you. Some games are just intended to be played by higher intellects."

"Harming a person weaker than you doesn't take any special abilities," Morgan told him.

"Neither does slamming your fist down on a table," said Rothchild, looking mournfully up at Morgan. "But, we all must do what we must do."

They go to leave, and he tilts his head to one side, his eyes on the two-way glass. "Bring Doctor Reid back with you."

On the far side of the glass, Reid watched him speculatively. "I never have any normal fans."

Grace, who could think of a few choice things to say to that, declined to comment.

Hotch moved further in to make room as Morgan and Rossi came in through the adjoining door.

"This guy loves the attention," Morgan said.

"He's a collosal asshat," Grace observed. Morgan and Rossi both cracked a smile, which was her intention. "Classic narcissist," she added, more seriously.

"He has a God complex," Rossi reflected. "Sooner or later he'll give up something important about Kaylee and the kids. Guys like him always do."

"Before he hurts them?" Morgan asked, bringing them back to their current dilemma.

"One forty-five," said Hotch, checking his watch. "He said we have until ten."

"We need a button to push," said Rossi.

"Well, he really doesn't like you for some reason," Grace pointed out. "That gives us something."

"Not enough to shake him," Reid said, rather acidly.

"The seven original homicides could give us some leverage," said Morgan.

Rossi shook his head. "He says we'll never find any evidence, so he has nothin' to worry about on them."

"More hubris, perhaps?" Grace suggested, glaring daggers at the grumpy genius in the corner.

"Don't be stupid," Reid snapped, shutting Grace down. "He made a point of saying there are no bodies to find – no physical evidence."

"Yeah, cause no unsub's ever lied to us before," Grace remarked, tartly.

"We just have to prove that a crime has been committed," said Hotch sharply, which they both took as a warning. "We can do that circumstantially."

"We need to identify the original seven women," said Rossi, decisively. "Going back in there with names might just shake him up."

"How do we do that?" Reid asked.

"We take it backwards," said Grace, gritting her teeth. "Reverse profiling."

Rossi nodded.

"Learn everything about him and his methods, and profile it back to what kind of victim he would choose – and from where," Hotch agreed.

Morgan raised his eyebrows. "From the unsub to the victim."

0o0

The team had assembled, having collected everything they could find as much about Professor Rothchild and Kaylee and the kids as they could, in the situation room. With a woman and five kids stashed somewhere in the states of Virginia or Maryland, the mood was pretty tense.

Both Aaron and Reid, who was filled with the kind of energy you might expect when a serial killer introduced himself out of the blue, were both pacing around the table in opposite directions, thinking. The others were clustered around the table, intensely focussed on the talk in hand.

"I went through VICAP," Garcia announced. "There are literally thousands of open missing women cases across the country."

"It's not the entire country though," Reid pointed out. "Kaylee was abducted at nine-thirty this morning. He has time to take them somewhere, hide them and make it to Fredricksburg two hours later."

"You'd need a place with a lot privacy to hide five victims," Prentiss pointed out.

"A house," Aaron suggested.

"And a van to transport them," Pearce reminded them. "Did campus police pick up a vehicle?"

Garcia shook her head. "They're checking CCTV now."

"He's local," Rossi said.

Reid nodded thoughtfully. "He was late for the presentation," he recalled. "You know, it was more like two and a half hours after the abduction. He got there around noon, which puts him somewhere in that radius."

"Garcia, work up a map," Aaron instructed. "I need the farthest point he could have taken Kaylee and the kids from Loretto and still gotten back to Fredricksburg by noon."

"That shouldn't be too hard," Garcia agreed.

"Alright, what do we know so far?" Rossi asked, getting up and writing on the board. "He's – uh – obsessively neat and clean."

"He clearly believes he's refined – and superior," Pearce added. "He thinks it sets him apart."

"He's not the only one," Reid said, in an undertone.

Pearce glared at him, but didn't comment, for which Aaron was grateful. He was getting tired of intervening.

"He did research on Reid and me, at least," Rossi said. "He abducted five people and then gets to a scheduled recruitment session at a specific time. That's extensive pre-planning."

"Say, did you find anything in those pictures, Garcia?" Reid double-checked.

She grimaced. "I can't even positively say they're dead."

"How about hair colour?" Rossi asked.

"Of the ones that show hair, they appear to be brunettes," Garcia told them.

Rossi nodded. "So is Kaylee."

"I'll start there," said Garcia, making a note on her violently colourful notepad. "Brunettes from central Virginia that are missing."

Morgan, who had just come in from calling forensics, declared, "I don't got zip on his prints. He's not in any system. He's a ghost."

"Alright, if he hasn't been fingerprinted, he hasn't been arrested," Rossi surmised. "Which also means he hasn't had a passport, driver's licence, or been in the military."

"He's never been a teacher, either," Reid realised suddenly. "You have to be fingerprinted to be a teacher."

"So, he's a professor who doesn't teach…"

"Assuming he's a professor at all," Pearce pointed out.

"What kind of professor doesn't teach?" Todd asked, perplexed.

Aaron glanced in her direction. It was something of a relief that she was calmer now, with something urgent to sink her teeth into.

"Researcher?" Reid answered. "Someone on a grant, maybe."

"Yeah, a grant would give him the time," Aaron agreed.

"And money," Pearce said, maybe remembering those of her acadmic father's colleagues who had grants or tenure. "The kind of infrastructure he needs to keep five people quiet would be expensive."

"Other unsubs manage without it," Reid challenged, pettishly.

Pearce rolled her eyes. "But this one might not," she argued, in a slightly sing-song kind of voice.

"There must be some sort of central grant database," said Garcia, either immune to or ignoring the atmosphere. "I can't imagine the government just handing out money and not che–" She stopped, realising she was essentially giving herself instructions. "I'll look anyway," she said, getting up and hurrying off to do just that.

"From past conversations we know he's a narcissist and seemingly remorseless," Rossi continued, adding to his list.

Morgan nodded, folding his arms. "Psychopath."

"You know, we could eliminate a lot of these open missing persons cases if we could just figure out how he met them," Prentiss reflected, looking up from the depressingly tall stack of files.

"Well then, contact the Loretto PD and get us an invitation to consult on the Kaylee Robinson case," Aaron instructed Todd. "Be nice to them," he stipulated. "They don't have to let us. And then you and Morgan go down there and find out what you can."

There was a moment where a long, cool and distinctly unfriendly stare passed between Morgan and Todd.

 _Well, that explains that_ , Aaron reflected.

"Let's go," said Morgan finally, and led her out of the room.

The tension between the two agents was not lost on the rest of the room. Prentiss shook her head at Rossi, who raised a curious eyebrow. Pearce, too was watching them go with veiled interest, and Reid was glaring at her because of it.

"What're you looking at?" Reid snapped, and Pearce transferred her gaze – similarly unfriendly – to him.

Before she could respond, however, Aaron decided enough was enough. "Guys, focus."

Pearce immediately looked mollified, but curiously, Reid did not. Aaron sighed inwardly. He really would have preferred to handle the incident in Vegas without doing anything more official than the quiet words he'd already had with his two youngest agents, but if they carried on like this it would impede their work – and people outside the team would see how disjointed they were. Something like that could be disastrous when they needed people the public or other organisations to trust them. It could undermine everything.

Fortunately, Rossi had been doing this job for long enough that two team members falling out wouldn't distract him for more than a few seconds.

"Prentiss," he said, ignoring the tension between the youngest members of the team. "I need you to do something for me."

"Anything."

"Guys, what's our strategy gonna be in there with the interrogation?" Reid asked.

"You're not gonna be in there with me," Rossi told him, rather bluntly.

Well, there was no point beating around the bush with these things.

"What do you mean?" Reid asked, surprised and disappointed.

"You'd be playing into his hands – that's exactly what he wants," Pearce remarked, which was accurate, but it wasn't what Reid wanted to hear, nor the person he wanted to hear it from.

He glowered at her.

Rossi nodded his agreement. "We have to knock him off his game. That's all we have right now."

"He's right," said Aaron, and Reid subsided.

Rossi and Prentiss left, and their colleagues turned to the board, their body language standoffish. Aaron made a descision.

"Reid, Pearce – my office."

Pearce sighed and got heavily to her feet, apparently resigned; Reid was not. He rolled his eyes like a sulky teenager and stalked off, getting to the office just ahead of Aaron.


	12. Reverse Profiling

**Essential listening: Human, by Rag'n'Bone Man**

0o0

"Sit down," he instructed, but Reid hovered around the back of his chair; Pearce did as she was told.

It was strange, Aaron reflected, how meek she could be, even when she was furious or frustrated. Perhaps it was the years of police training. You could rail against your superior all you wanted, but in an organisation like the London Metropolitan Police Force you never got anywhere if you didn't put your trust into or (for want of a better word) chose to sulk at your line manager. It was probably why she radiated that faint air of subversion, most of the time.

Reid's more academic background had not provided him with the same conditioning. There were times when he just couldn't resist the urge to be right, to be the best, to save a life against the odds. It was a desire that Aaron, who had started out as a prosecutor, entirely understood, but the kid would have to learn how to put that to one side. Sometimes it made him a liability, both to himself and his to colleagues.

He surveyed them for a moment before taking a seat himself: although they were dealing with it differently, both of them were obviously furious. Where Reid was spitting fire, Pearce was cold and prickly.

 _They're going to drive me mad,_ he thought, suddenly. _All of them together. Morgan with his trust issues; Rossi with his occasional maverick behaviour; Garcia with her non-regulation personality; Todd with her lack of experience and confidence; and these two._

 _Thank God for JJ and Prentiss._

"Your behaviour is inappropriate and, frankly, not constructive. I will not tolerate it." He shook his head at their stony faces. "There are five missing people out there. I need you both to focus on the case – and I need you to work together."

He waited for either of them to say anything, but neither did.

 _The one time they manage to agree with one another,_ he thought.

"I don't want to take more official action over your personal problems," he said, seriously. "But if you can't work as part of this team then I will be forced to. Am I understood?"

"Yes sir," said Pearce, her face blank.

"Sure," said Reid, grudgingly.

"Good," said Aaron, and Reid took this as his signal to leave. He didn't exactly slam the door, but he shut it rather definitely.

Pearce seemed to diminish slightly, as he made his exit, though she remained straight-backed in the chair. Briefly, she closed her eyes, and Aaron realised that she wasn't just upset, she was exhausted.

"I'm sorry," she said, as he wondered how she got that good at hiding it.

"Thank you," he said, scrutinizing his younger agent.

Had she been sleeping?

"Are you okay?"

Pearce looked up, surprised. Unexpectedly, she shot him a wry smile. "I can cope, if that's what you're asking."

"As your team leader I have a responsibility for your well-being," he pointed out, testing the water. He knew he could probably push her to talk to him, but right now that was unlikely to help. Better to encourage her to come to him, if he could.

"You don't have to worry about me," she told him, and he could see that she was lying. He allowed her to continue, nonetheless. "I'm not getting a great deal of sleep," she admitted, "and…" She frowned deeply, pursing her lips. "And I've lost my best friend."

Pearce looked rather intently at her knees, apparently not trusting herself to speak.

"You're distancing yourself from the rest of us," he said, after a pause to allow her to regain control of her vocal chords.

She glanced up at him, and then away, out of the window. It wasn't an acknowledgement as such, but it was all Aaron needed to confirm his assessment.

"You spent most of the Houston case in your hotel room," he pointed out, gently. "On the jet you sit apart, put your headphones in and bury yourself in a book. You don't come out with us anymore. Grace, it's not healthy."

"As healthy as working six a.m. to midnight every day?" she asked sharply, and for a moment he saw that spark of indolence that she had described as getting her in trouble in London.

It was gone almost as soon as he had registered it, hidden behind the mask of calm professionalism that they all used when things had gone badly wrong and they didn't want to talk about it.

Aaron looked away, saddened that she felt the need to use it here, in his office, which ought to be a safe space for the members of his team.

Unusually, it must have registered on his face, because Pearce let out a small huff of air; he turned back to find her frowning slightly, resting her eyes on the phone on his desk for want of a better place to put them. "I know I am," she said, quietly. "I promised you that I wouldn't make you regret keeping me on, and I won't. I won't make that mistake again."

She paused, and Aaron waited. Pearce kept so much to herself that anything she told him without prompting counted as serious personal growth. Better to let her come to that in her own time and in her own way, if he could.

"I know people say and do stupid stuff when they're hurt and angry," she began again, and there was a halting quality to her voice now that suggested she wasn't finding it altogether easy to breathe. "But I trusted Reid. I told him things I've never told anyone else – on this side of the Atlantic, or the other," she continued. Her voice cracked and wavered for a moment, but she went on, "And the first time he got annoyed at me he just threw it all back in my face."

She met his eyes, and Aaron could see the brittle control there, and something else. A deeper hurt and shame that she wouldn't let near the surface. He wondered at it, and what had made her so very wary of trusting her teammates.

"It's not an excuse, and I shouldn't have hit him, but he wouldn't have known what to say to set me off if I hadn't let him in," she said, heavily. "He knew exactly which buttons to press because I handed him a road map. I trusted him."

Pearce slowly got to her feet and looked right at Aaron. "I told you. I won't make that mistake again."

She let herself out of his office with some of her usual energy, but contained, protected. Aaron watched her go, feeling conflicted. "That wasn't exactly what I meant."

0o0

Garcia was sitting in her tech lair, her fingers steepled. She was poised for action, and had been for several minutes – she just needed to know how to begin. And that was the problem. She didn't, entirely.

"Okay, how far could he have gone from Loretto and make it back to Fredericksburg by noon?" she asked herself and reached for her keyboard, but stopped. This was the one area of data analysis she didn't have the first clue how to do. It was pretty much geographic profiling, and that was more Reid's forte than hers.

"There must be some sort of mathematical equation for this. Should've paid more attention in algebra." She hmphed and got to her feet. "Note to self: get Doctor Reid in here, ASAP."

The sound of her email pinging made her pause and look back. The address was unknown, which was unusual for her system, and that gave her pause.

"What the…?"

She looked a little closer: secure file, web address for _goldenrat_ net. Curious, she typed the address into a secure browser and immediately found a moving image – not quite a film, more like stop motion photography. It looked like the inside of some kind of concrete bunker or container, and in the stark, dark room, lit by strip lights were –

"Oh _no!"_ she breathed and ran out of her office.

0o0

Emily stirred her coffee, annoyed.

The interview Rossi had engineered had been instructive, and they had made some headway, but Rothchild was sufficiently smug for even the minutest amount of progress to feel frustratingly slow.

And there were still five missing people to find and save – if they could do it in time.

She sighed. She hated this kind of unsub. They were thoughtful and meticulous, and they would always be completely certain that any deadline they gave to law enforcement would be pretty much impossible to meet. Assuming they were alive at all, and he hadn't already killed Kaylee and the kids, just to ensure that they would fail.

 _No_ , she thought, with a frown. _This is a game for him, a challenge. He needs the risk of failure for the payoff he's going to get if he succeeds. They're alive, somewhere._

 _Somewhere between Loretto and Fredricksburg._

Her presence had rattled him, as Rossi had gambled it might. He couldn't even look at her, and he'd backed himself against the far wall while she'd been in the interview room – completely the opposite behaviour to when it had just been him and Rossi. Then he had been smug and superior, acting as if Rossi was something he'd scraped off his shoe. Someone to be looked down on; pitied.

His behaviour towards Emily, though, had spoken of a deep-rooted fear of women – maybe even a pathological inability to deal with them on an equal level.

He'd probably stalked his victims, learning their routines and vulnerabilities before taking them out with a blitz attack, before subjecting them to countless torments before he murdered them.

"Coward," she muttered to herself, but she was overheard.

"Of the worst kind," Grace remarked, thoughtfully.

She had been staring at the board, double and triple checking every aspect of behaviour they had before Garcia brought them their missing persons files and they could start whittling.

"Anything?" Emily asked, without much hope. Grace's demeanour was not that of a person who was in the grip of a revelation.

"Naff all," she remarked, sounding weary.

Emily looked along her shoulder at her. The altercation between her and Reid in Las Vegas was simultaneously the hottest gossip and utterly unspoken, at least during office hours; it was a rule adhered to by everyone save Reid.

As far as she knew, Grace hadn't talked about it to anyone but Morgan (and presumably Hotch), and then only briefly. That was how she functioned, keeping things close and private. Normally, the same could be said of Reid, too, but it was perhaps a mark of how angry he was – or how unfamiliar a situation falling out with someone on this scale was for him – that he was taking the opportunity to vent. He'd spent an hour and a half basically bitching about her to Emily, who had lent a semi-sympathetic ear so he could get it off his chest, but had made it clear as they walked back to the BAU that she felt they'd both had reasons to be annoyed.

He had refused to talk to her for the rest of the afternoon.

Given how close the two of them had been, it had to be pretty hard on them both, falling out like this. Although she was trying pretty hard not to show it, Emily could see some of the toll it was having on her. She looked tired and drawn.

"Are you al–" she began, but was interrupted by the door swinging open at some speed.

Both women turned, alarmed, to find Garcia hanging off the other side of it. "Don't any of you ever answer your cell phones when you're in the office?" she demanded, but continued before either of them could protest that neither of their phones had gone off. "I got a video of Kaylee and the kids!"

"What?" Emily gasped, as Grace demanded, "From where?"

"I don't know! The unsub I guess – it wouldn't be that difficult to set up if he planned to be interrogated at this time. There was an email – I think it's a live stream! Where's Hotch?"

"In his office," said Emily, but Grace had sprung across the room and out the door, Garcia hot on their heels.

Predicting their likely trajectory, Emily trotted down the steps at the back of the situation room, a thousand unpleasant scenarios of what they were about to witness shooting around her head. Her three teammates burst forth from Hotch's office and she joined them as they passed through the main doors, Garcia leading the way like a very anxious, avenging pin-up girl.

If she was right about what she'd been sent (and by whom) it meant they had a window into his psyche – and they could check on the victims' welfare, assuming it was live.

He was taunting them, of course, but it was also a foolish move. It told them a lot about him, and about the people he was holding.

"It just popped up on my screen," Garcia announced, a touch breathlessly, as they arrived in her lair. "It's them!"

"There are only three children," Hotch observed, after a moment's study.

"There were four when I went to get you," Garcia said, sounding puzzled. She took a seat in front of her monitor, staring at it as if the fourth child would just pop out if she looked hard enough.

Emily squinted at the window. "What is this, on their faces?" she asked, pointing.

Some kind of mask, maybe? Each one was attached to the ceiling by coiling wires, long enough to allow a little movement, but not enough – the woman and her three, terrified charges were forced to stand separately.

"They're gas masks," Hotch realised, disturbed.

"Oh – why would you fill a place with gas and then provide gas masks?" Emily exclaimed.

Apart from anything else, it was inefficient, and this guy was a planner. It just didn't make sense!

"Maybe the gas serves some other purpose," Hotch mused.

"Such as?" Garcia asked, looking up at Hotch with wide, innocent eyes.

"Control," Grace guessed, frowning deeply.

Hotch nodded. "Look how evenly they're spaced out – the hoses are stretched out as far as they can go without coming off."

"The masks are to keep them in specific positions," Emily realised.

"Look at these lines on the floor," Grace remarked, pointing. "They continue up the walls."

"What are they?" Garcia asked, following her gaze.

"Some kind of partition, maybe?" Grace replied. "If he wants them to stay exactly where they are then maybe he's got something rigged up to separate them, one by one…"

They looked up as Reid and Rossi charged in.

"He said one of them's already dead." Reid told them, urgently.

Rossi added, "One of the five."

Hotch directed them to the computer screen. "There are only three children."

"What's this?" Reid asked, leaning over Garcia's shoulder.

"An anonymous site emailed to me," she told him.

"He said one will die every two hours, not all five in ten," Rossi shook his head, obviously feeling like he'd let everyone down. "He said 'ten hours' – I just assumed –"

"We all did," said Grace. "You couldn't have known."

"It's like a chess game," Reid complained, his eyes on the woman and crying kids. "He's two moves ahead."

Hotch pulled them to order. "Let's not get diverted. How're we doing with the seven missing women?"

Wordlessly, Garcia brought up a screen full of photographs of missing brunettes.

Emily grimaced. There were so many.

"Hah. Uh, so far I've got thirty-nine missing women, just in central Virginia," Garcia told them.

"Okay, thirty years old like Kaylee," Hotch instructed. "Narcissists tend to be extremely preferential."

Garcia nodded, typed and the number of pictures reduced. "Twenty-eight."

"He says he's been working on this for five years," Rossi recalled.

"Over the last five years…" Garcia echoed, typing again. The number of pictures reduced again. "Seventeen."

"Alright," said Hotch. "If he thinks he's going to jail for even one of the original seven homicides maybe he'll tell us where the rest of them are, just to give himself some deal room. How long do we have until the next one?" he asked, moving towards the door.

Reid checked his watch. "One hour and forty-eight minutes."

Really, Emily thought, that was no time at all.

0o0

Derek turned a corner, half an eye on the sat-nav. Reid had called to tell them that their deadline had altered slightly, and he was already feeling the bite of the chase. There was nothing they could do about that first kid right now, so he pushed the anguish he felt at having failed them to the back of his mind and focussed on driving.

There were still four more people to save.

He glanced at Jordan Todd, who was presently liaising with the local Lorreto P.D. She had been extremely reluctant to get in the car with him, and honestly, the feeling was mutual. Ego had no place in their job, and it was about time she learned that.

He wasn't about to make life harder for them, however, since she was currently being grudgingly polite. They had bigger things to worry about.

"Thanks Ma'am, we're around the corner," said Todd, before hanging up. "The husband and the local P.D. are all at the crime scene. They're waiting for you," she told him.

"Us," said Derek.

"What?"

"Us. They're waiting for _us_ ," he said again. He saw the look of surprise on Todd's face, so he continued, "You told that detective this morning that you would send his case to the team and if _they_ were interested you would call him."

Todd, frustrated, replied, "Look, 'interested' wasn't the right word, I get that. I won't make that mistake again."

"Jordan, you are a member of this team," Derek told her, forestalling further disagreement. "There is no 'they'. It's 'we'. It's important for you to know that."

0o0

Professor Rothchild was still waxing lyrical about how special he was.

It had been two hours since they'd arrived back at the BAU, and the only time he'd shut up had been when Prentiss had surprised him into submission.

Dave had taken up a position across the room, leaning against the wall as if he didn't much care what was being said. Of course, he _did_ care; anything Rothchild said or did could be used to help Kaylee and the kids. All he had to do was watch and listen, and keep his head.

Right now, he was just letting him talk, while the others traced the missing women and found an angle they could use to discombobulate the arrogant bastard. He would trip himself up eventually, reveal more than he intended. They always did.

 _He thinks he's so special,_ Dave mused. _I've met hundreds of killers just like him._

"Do you know, I was born with an extra Y chromosome?" Rothchild asked, in his quiet, precise voice.

"So?"

"You don't know what that means?" Rothchild asked, surprised.

Daisy shrugged. "It doesn't mean anything."

"It means," said the Professor, with enough of a pause to be considered dramatic, "I was born to be a killer."

 _You keep tellin' yourself that._

Really, it was extraordinary what lengths killers would go to make the murders they committed someone else's fault.

Aloud, Dave laughed. "Now _that's_ funny."

Rothchild smiled; he looked mildly sorry for him. "No, no, no. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about," he said, almost playfully. "I have an extra Y, it makes me a killer."

"That's junk science, a joke," Dave told him bluntly. "It was debunked years ago."

"So, you don't believe that killing is genetic?"

"It's not a matter of me believing it," said Dave. "It isn't true. Killing someone or not killing someone is a choice. If those people die, it's because _you_ chose to make it happen."

There was that little smirk again, carefully controlled – showing Dave that he had the upper hand and the BAU were hopelessly lost.

"Ah," he said, nodding smugly. "Ah."


	13. Perfection

**Essential listening: Saving us a Riot, by Phoria**

0o0

Grace read rapidly through the file in front of her. They were gathered in the situation room, apart from Morgan and Todd, who were still in Loretto, and Rossi, who was gritting his teeth in an interview room.

The rest of the team were whittling the possible victims down. Even Garcia had emerged from her technical lair. There was nothing else she could do now, without profiling happening first, so she figured she might as well help.

Peace was prevailing, mostly because there was a laptop with a live feed of the victims on the desk between them all. No one would mess with that, no matter how grumpy they were. Grace sighed and put her file on the growing stack to her right. There were too many missing women. That one had looked good, but she'd been grabbed on a night out her friends had persuaded her to attend, far outside her usual social and geographic circle.

This guy was a planner and a stalker, not an opportunist. She didn't fit the pattern.

"Margaret Peters," Hotch dictated, as Garcia wrote the woman's name on the board. "Another Gloucester Point. Disappeared in 2006 on her way to work. Last seen at the coffee shop she went to every morning."

"Check," said Garcia, writing the town on the board.

"That's number six," Reid observed. "We need one more…"

"Most of these went missing _outside_ their routines," Grace remarked, coming to the end of her pile of files.

"We need women who had set habits," Prentiss mused, from behind her own folder.

"Hey, what's happening there?" Garcia asked, distracted.

As one, the agents turned and looked at the live feed, instantly entranced. Kaylee was reorganising the kids in the bunker, getting them to share a mask at one end of the room, then running all the way back down to the end.

"She's put herself closest to the end – farthest from the camera," Reid remarked.

"Why?" Prentiss asked.

"Maybe she knows something we don't," Hotch reflected.

"She's a caregiver," Grace suggested. "She'll put herself in the most danger, rather than the kids."

"She knows she doesn't have a lot of time," said Hotch. "Let's continue."

Mentally, the five agents shook themselves and turned back to the files.

"Uh, Lindsey Conner," Prentiss read aloud. "She was last seen when she stepped out to have a cigarette, while having a blown tyre fixed."

Reid winced, looking up. "That doesn't sound like something routine."

"Lisa McDaniels, Saluda," Hotch put in. "Went missing early 2008, on her daily jog."

"Oh, she fits," said Prentiss.

"That's seven," said Hotch, looking at the board. "Including Kaylee, that makes eight."

They looked at their pictures, each struck by the same thought.

"Whoa," Prentiss murmured.

"They're all incredibly beautiful," said Hotch.

Reid frowned. "Almost unnaturally."

"He has an obsession with perfection," Grace pointed out, thoughtfully. "He's calling this his 'masterpiece' and referencing da Vinci – maybe that's as much because of their beauty as his own ego?"

Garcia, who had been frowning at the board, asked, "What are the chances that three out of the seven victims are from the same town?"

They followed her gaze; Saluda certainly seemed to be Professor Rothchild's stalking ground of choice.

"What's the population of Saluda?" Prentiss enquired.

"Essex County's small, but it's near water," Reid told her. "A lot of people have boats there –and weekend homes."

"Maybe that makes it easier for him," Grace suggested. "Tourists are more relaxed. They go out of the city where they think it's safer and let their guard down."

"And two from Gloucester Point," Hotch observed.

There was definitely a pattern here – but where did it point?

Reid's phone went off. "Morgan just sent this to me from the Robinson house," he announced, showing them an email with a picture of unusually placed toys at the crime scene.

They had been arranged in a perfect circle with a line through the middle.

"Ritual?" Grace asked, wracking her brain for all the possible occult meanings of a circle with a line through it.

She was distracted by Reid, however. He bit his lip, walking slowly to the board, the cogs in his mind obviously whirring at some speed now.

"Perfection," he whispered, writing 'Loretto 5' at the top of the board. The others held their tongues, recognising the signs of some fierce calculations. Not that it mattered; he might as well have been alone in the room, his mind was so vastly somewhere else.

Grace stared at the back of his head, willing him on.

Suddenly, he started to draw, making a circle around all the victims' names. "One, one, two, three, five," he murmured, adding a line through the middle – just like the toys.

"Does that mean something?" Prentiss asked.

"That's a Fibonacci sequence," Grace realised, peering at the numbers. "But why?"

It seemed she was not about to get an answer; Reid bolted out of the door.

"I'm guessing he's onto something," said Prentiss, their eyes following his progress through the bullpen and out in to the corridor.

Garcia shook her head. "I've never seen him move that fast!"

"A Fibonacci sequence?" Hotch asked, and Grace realised that this had been directed to her.

"Yeah, you know – one of those sequences of numbers that show up all over the place in nature," she told him. "It determines the arrangement of things like lupin flowers, or pineapple spines, or pine cones, or sunflower seeds. We learned about it in school."

She fell silent, trying to remember anything more about the poster that had hung to the left of the blackboard in her GCSE maths classroom.

"Here we go," said Prentiss, nodding towards the bullpen.

Grace looked up to see Reid hurrying back, Rossi practically running after him.

"Garcia, can you put a map of Virginia on the screen?" Reid asked, without preamble, pushing the board out of the way. He turned to face them, something gold and shining clutched in his fist. "The irrational number know as 'fi' – basically lines and segments in relation to each other and to the whole," he told them, as if he were addressing a class. He pointed at the shape he'd drawn. "It's called the golden ratio."

"Goldenrat!" Garcia exclaimed excitedly. "That's the web address, golden rat dot net!"

"It's a ratio found all through life," Reid explained. "In fact many people that we find conventionally attractive are proportioned based on that ratio."

"da Vinci," Grace realised, her eyes roving over the seven, extremely beautiful women.

"Yeah." Reid nodded at her, all antagonism forgotten. "He – he, uh made a reference to Leonardo da Vinci. da Vinci used it in a lot of his paintings. As a matter of fact, the last supper is a perfect example of –"

"Reid – Reid," Hotch cautioned, bringing him to a halt before they got into a lecture about perspective in Renaissance art. "How do we find them?"

"Right," said Reid, forcing his mind to switch gears. "The whole concept is represented by this pendant." He lifted his hand and waved the gold pendant Rothchild had told Rossi he'd got from a fayre. "Including the logarithmic spiral created by using a Fibonacci sequence."

Prentiss punched Grace on the arm. She rubbed it, pleased that she'd remembered that much.

"Follow me on this," said Reid, gesturing at the map Garcia had put on the screen. "We can – we can manipulate this image, right?"

Garcia nodded, sitting down in front of her laptop. "Tell me what you need."

"Pull up all the towns the missings are from."

They watched, mutely, as they appeared on screen.

"Wonderful," said Reid. "We had one in Richmond, one in Dinwiddie, then two in Gloucester Point and three in Saluda," he observed, pointing at each location in turn. "And finally, five in Loretto this morning. One, one, two, three, five is a Fibonacci series, each number added to the one before – it – it – it's what his tics mean," he explained. "He's subconsciously counting off the Fibonacci sequence in his head, over and over again."

Grace bit the inside of her mouth to keep herself from tutting aloud. It wasn't that he was wrong – far from it. It sounded like he was right on the money, as usual.

 _Why does he have to be so damn sexy when he's being smart?_ she asked herself, angrily. _It's maddening!_ _Not productive!_ she reminded herself, annoyed at her own, treacherous mind, and instead made herself focus on the bruise she was ashamed of giving him.

It helped, because it also brought to mind exactly why she'd hit him. She scowled.

Unaware of her irritation, Reid continued, "Geometrically, it can be expressed as a spiral," he said, waving the pendant again. "It's called a logarithmic spiral." He looked at Garcia. "Can you put the spiral on the map?"

Wordlessly, Garcia did so.

"Thanks. Okay, now, flip it one-eighty degrees." He paused, waiting for her to acquiesce. "Now make it bigger… Bigger. Little, little bit bigger? Stop! Stop!"

He peered closely at the map, his colleagues waiting with baited breath.

"The pendant is like a key," he said, indicating a town at the centre of the spiral. "Chester, Virginia."

"You're sure?" Rossi asked.

Reid nodded emphatically. "And with his level of obsession with these numbers, the ratio will permeate his entire life. If we took a street map of Chester the location Kaylee and the children are being held will fall into one of these points on that map as well. The ratio works with – uh – any scale at all."

"Morgan and Todd are closer," Hotch said, as they all began to move. "Call them and tell them to get to Chester. Tell Morgan not to let Todd go in, she's not fully trained for the field. I'll get a chopper ready. Reid, Prentiss, Pearce – get a city map and you're with me."

"There's still something… bugging me about this," Rossi remarked, as they hurried out.

Grace glanced back at him over her shoulder, leaving him puzzling over the board, stroking his neat beard.

0o0

Ten minutes later, Dave prepared himself. Everything hinged on this. If he did this right, they would have the bastard, once and for all. Taking a deep breath, he opened the door.

"Chester, Virginia," he announced.

Professor looked up from his intense examination of his watch. "What?"

"The whole team is going there," Dave informed him.

"I see," he said. He looked down at his hands for a moment, steepling the thumbs and counting out the Fibonacci sequence Reid had identified on them, a slight smile on his face.

He didn't look disappointed, more sort of smug.

"They'll be there before four o'clock, before the next deadline," Dave prompted. "You lose."

The Professor looked again at his watch, but didn't speak.

"Explain something to me," Dave said, switching tack. "This is all about a geometric pattern?"

That obviously awoke something in him, because he stirred. "Fi is much more than a geometric pattern, David."

"Killing all those women. Kaylee Robinson, the first seven," Dave remarked. "You killed them because they were beautiful?"

"You mean, hypothetically?" Rothchild asked, putting on the watch.

"Oh, I'm just tryin' to understand this math thing," said Dave, innocently.

He was the stupid, below-average IQ FBI agent, after all, and if playing the part Rothchild had cast for him got them what they needed to know, then so be it.

"All animals desperately need a way to try to detect others of their species," the Professor said. "Dogs have scent; dolphins have sound. The golden ratio is a subconscious identifier of perfect humanness. If I _had_ done all these things," he continued, giving a little chuckle, "it wouldn't be because they were beautiful. It would be because they were _perfect_ examples of humanity."

"Because they're human?" Dave asked.

"Hypothetically speaking."

"Well, this doesn't make any sense to me," Dave remarked. "Killing a human _because_ they're human?"

Professor Rothchild paused, preparing himself for his next point. "Do you know what _Homo Sapiens Sapiens_ really means, David? Its _literal_ translation?"

He did, but Rothchild didn't need to know that. "No," he lied.

"'Man, wise, wise'." Professor Rothchild paused for effect, getting to his feet. "Think about that. We named ourselves doubly wise. We are twice as wise as every other creature on the planet. The hubris, the arrogance," he reflected, gesticulating at each. "Humans are a blight. We should all be eradicated."

"You hate humanity?" Dave asked, still patrolling slowly around the room, frowning deeply.

"Every bit as much as you do."

Dave paused, puzzled, looking up at him. "I don't hate humanity."

The Professor shook his head lightly. "I told you, I read all of your books. It's in there, every one of them. _Your_ hatred. Your first book, chapter three, page eighty nine. One, three, eighty-nine." Unconsciously, he tapped his fingers together again, a physical expression of the first few numbers of the sequence, the way Reid had said he would. "All Fibonacci numbers."

Dave narrowed his eyes. Interesting.

"'The first time I saw one of William Grace's victims I knew I was looking at the residue of pure evil,'" Rotchild quoted, word perfect. "'I would never again feel completely safe around a human being.'"

Dave sat down, staring at him. "Th- this is all about my books?"

"You know exactly what human beings are capable of," Professor Rothchild told him.

"I can hate the things people do and have pity for who they are," Dave retorted.

"Pity," Rothchild repeated, sounding disgusted. "You _pity_ them?"

"Any man who feels that the only way to have power or purpose is to hurt others deserves pity," Dave remarked, watching the other man closely.

"Your fifth book, chapter thirteen, page one hundred and forty-four," the professor argued, pacing now. "'I know it makes little sense to try and defer violence with more violence, but deterrence is not why I believe in the death penalty. There are some people that are so violent, so evil, that society has no choice but to be done with them. Vengeance is something that society needs, from time to time, if for no other purpose than to keep the rest of us sane'. Where is the pity –"

" _Sir,"_ Garcia came in over the intercom, interrupting him. _"They found the house. You were right, they're going inside now."_

"Thank you," said David.

"'Vengeance keeps us sane'," Rothchild repeated. "What a _fascinating_ statement. You may have your vengeance… as I am about to have mine."

"What?" Dave asked, arching an eyebrow.

"They're never going to make it out of that house, David," he said, with exceptional smugness. David stared at him. "It was never about that perfect woman, or those wonderful children. It was about your team," he said simply. "Your merry band of five. _They_ complete my sequence."

Hurriedly, Dave got up and pressed the intercom. "Garcia?" He asked, sounding panicked. Get Hotch on the phone, _now_."

"It's too late, David," said Rothchild softly. "The minute they stepped into that house they were dead."

Dave stared at him, wide-eyed.

"I _knew_ if I kept prodding you that you would rise to my challenge," Rothchild gloated.

" _Hotch isn't answering!"_ Garcia told him, through the intercom.

"Try Morgan!" he hissed, images of all the horrible things that might be happening to his friends flashing through his mind.

"I knew that you would insist on being in the room alone with me," the other man continued, still in that soft, silky voice. "You would try to beat me. I knew you would send them all out there."

" _No, nothing!"_ Garcia said, sounding scared now.

"Prentiss, or Pearce, or Reid! It's a trap! Stop them!"

"But you're not just filled with hatred, David," Rothchild said, coming close to him, continuing to gloat. "You're filled with arrogance, hubris. Just like every other human being. Just like me."

Garcia cried out, _"I can't reach anyone!"_

"Try again!" David insisted, his face a mask of horror.

"They're never going to answer," Professor Rothchild taunted him. "You lose."

"Why? What did I ever do?" Ro asked, in a shell-shocked voice. He turned his back on PR, leaving himself vulnerable.

"William Grace," said the sadistic killer behind him. "The man you called 'the face of pure evil'. My brother."

 _Aha…_

"My life ended the day you arrested him," said Rothchild, and finally, _finally_ , there was emotion in his voice. "Every time people talked about William Grace, they talked about his parents, or his brother, Henry. Because no one could believe that anyone that evil could possibly hide in the darkness," he continued, breathlessly, no longer able to contain his anger. "Surely, someone must have _seen_ , someone must have _known_ , surely his own brother…" Henry Grace was circling him now, and Dave was keenly aware that he was alone in the interview room, at the other man's mercy – a mercy he hadn't shown to the other members of the BAU. "I had a fiancé, David, beautiful woman. A _perfect_ woman. She sent the ring back to me. She said she was afraid to give it to me in person. She was afraid… of me."

"She was a brunette," Dave guessed.

"So then I started getting all these thoughts, these ideas, these images inside my head, and I couldn't – I couldn't escape them. And then, I realised my brother hadn't been alone in the darkness. I shared the same genetics, you _so casually_ dismissed. I started a second life. No one knew. But something… was missing, I couldn't figure it out. And then I found you, David Rossi, the man that ruined my life – and suddenly I knew what it was that was missing, because you had _written it_. Vengeance," he purred. "Vengeance."

Rossi stared at him. "You murdered all those women, just because of me?" he asked, in a tremulous voice.

Henry Grace came closer, leaned in his ear and whispered, "That's right. I killed twelve people because of you. You took _my_ family. I take _yours_."

He stood back, triumphant.

Dave let him savour it for a moment before nodding abruptly. "Did you get all that?" he called.

For the first time, Grace looked over at the intercom – which was still on.

" _Every word, boss,"_ said Garcia.

"Well, make copies before we give it to the US Attorney – this might make a pretty good teaching aid," Dave instructed, taking out his phone.

" _Yes sir."_

"Teaching?" Henry Grace asked weakly, utterly wrong-footed.

"Yeah, I teach, um, interrogation at the FBI Academy," said Dave, dismissively. "Hotch, Garcia said I got it right?"

" _Yeah, about everything,"_ Aaron told him. "We found the acid tanks around back. The acid would have covered the whole area outside the room. There were spigots everywhere. We'd have been trapped."

Rossi's eyes never left the professor's face. It was clear he could hear every word of the conversation, even though the phone wasn't on speaker.

"And what about Kaylee and the kids?"

" _They're fine – uh, they're fine, too,"_ Aaron said. "You were right about that, they were just part of the decoy."

"Oh no, that was Reid who figured out his obsession with those numbers," Aaron corrected his friend. "He wasn't about to kill ten people this afternoon, that's not in the pattern."

" _You get your confession?"_

"It's ongoing," said Dave, and he could practically hear Aaron smirk. "Thank you."

He hung up. "You'll be charged with kidnapping," he informed the other man, "but Kaylee and the kids are okay. You'll only face murder charges on the original seven women."

"With no evidence?" Grace scoffed, his voice betraying the fear and anger there.

"Yeah, you – you mentioned that when we first met," said Dave, cockily using the two-way glass to straighten his tie. "You said we would never be able to get you on those. I think that you'll discover that the videotaped confession has the power to move a lot of jurors."

He saw the man's composure turn inwards, so he went to leave. As he passed him, Henry Grace let out an anguished roar and leapt on him from behind; Dave was ready for him, however and slammed him against the wall, securing him easily.

"You waited until I turned my back, didn't you Henry?" he snarled. "Just like you did with those women!"

Grace struggled, trying to attack him a second time, but Dave had his arms in a vice-like grip.

" _Don't_ give me a reason to hurt you!" Dave snapped. "Oh, and one more thing. I'm gonna be there when they strap you down for that lethal injection, and just before they hit the plunger, I'm gonna lean in _real_ close and tell you to say hello to your scumbag brother."

He gave Henry Grace's arm one final, securing squeeze before leaving the room, disgusted.


	14. Chase the Day

**Essential listening: All We Do, by Oh Wonder**

0o0

Aaron leaned against a tree, watching over the coordination of the clean-up and evidence collection operation with a practised eye. As always, he had ninety percent of his mind on the crime scene, and the other ten percent fixed firmly on his team. Securing five innocent victims, an extremely disturbed serial killer and avoiding being burned to death with acid was a good day by anyone's standards, and he was hopeful that it might help to put some of their inter-team squabbles at rest, at least for a little while.

Well, vaguely hopeful, at any rate.

At the end of the tree-lined drive, Morgan and Agent Todd were bickering, somewhere between flirting and a real argument. Whatever their grievances were that morning, they seemed to have made up their differences – for the moment.

Aaron would take what he could get. Ostensibly casting a professional eye over the ambulances taking Kaylee Robinson and her four, small charges home, he listened in, in case he needed to separate them.

"So, what do you think of the other case?" Todd asked, smirking.

"What other case?" Morgan looked puzzled.

Aaron could practically hear him thinking, 'One isn't enough?'

"You told that detective you'd take a look and call him, _personally_ ," Todd reminded him.

"Are you serious? In case you hadn't noticed I've been a little busy here," Morgan retorted, obviously exasperated – and obviously enjoying it. He began walking towards the SUVs, as if that was the end of it.

Todd grinned, pursuing him. "I can dial the number for you if you'd like," she offered, before they passed between two SUVs and out of Aaron's earshot.

Prentiss and Reid, who were also eavesdropping, watched them go, amused.

Reid raised his eyebrows. "Things are going to be interesting," he remarked.

"Tch-yeah" said Prentiss, leaving to go and see to one of the kids.

At about the same moment, Pearce rounded the corner of the house and only just stopped short of walking right into Reid, who pulled a sour face at her sudden arrival. Aaron watched as she grimaced at the sight of him and carried on, wordlessly.

Without quite meaning to, Aaron rolled his eyes. He turned away, prepared to tolerate their ongoing feud only if it didn't impact on the job. They'd showed him today that they could put their disagreement to one side, if only temporarily, and that was a start.

Neither one of them was quite as inflexible as they liked to pretend.

"Hotch?"

He turned, surprised to find Reid standing a few feet away, holding his left arm in _exactly_ the way Jack did when he'd done something wrong, and looking generally quite sheepish.

"I – uh… I'm sorry," he said, looking down at his feet. "I shouldn't have snapped at you earlier, or walked out."

Feeling like his young agent was about to go on, Aaron merely gave him a curt nod – signalling both his acceptance of the apology and permission to continue.

"And I'll – I'll try to…" he cleared his throat, frowning momentarily. "I won't let it get in the way of the job."

Relieved, Aaron nodded again, and Reid moved on, trailing after Morgan and Todd.

Perhaps there was hope, after all.

0o0

 _Man must evolve, for all human conflict, a method that rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love._

Martin Luther King Jr

0o0

"Oh, he's just perfect!" Garcia cried, cradling the tiny baby in her arms.

"Please, Penelope, I don't wanna hear that word again any time soon," Rossi protested, putting his hands up.

Most of the team laughed, leaving only JJ and Will looking perplexed.

"I'll tell you later," Prentiss promised.

They had gathered at JJ and Will's townhouse to be formally introduced to young master Henry. Although many of them had technically seen him at the hospital, it had all been a bit rushed, and it was good for everyone to be able to cuddle with him in a quieter environment. Well, as quiet an environment as a room full of BAU agents could be.

Spencer smiled, thinking back to the late night a couple of weeks before when he'd sloped up to the hospital, feeling hurt and lonely, only to have a tiny baby thrust unexpectedly into his arms. Later, of course, he'd realised what JJ was up to, delivering Henry into his arms before he could protest, or freak out about it.

Henry's smallness had taken his breath away. It made no sense – of course babies were small, he knew that, but apparently that wasn't a thing you could fully appreciate until you actually had one pressed against your chest. He'd read all the manuals in case something had gone wrong and he'd had to help JJ out in the field or something, but nothing had prepared him for the tiny, snuffling human sleeping peacefully in his arms. Garcia was right, 'perfection' was the only appropriate word for that moment.

After everything that had transpired in Vegas, holding Henry had been just what he needed. It had felt like the brittle wall that had sprung up around his heart in his home town had melted entirely; it had brought him back to himself.

Really, it was no wonder that the whole of the team had fallen for the little guy, hook, line and sinker.

Feeling pleasantly relaxed, he watched Garcia happily cooing over his Godson, wondering whether he was cut out for the title. The role of godfather came with a lot of responsibilities, and he wasn't entirely sure he felt grown up enough for that. It made him respect Will and JJ, who were already turning out to be great parents, all the more.

 _Godfather…_

He turned the word around in his head; it still felt unfamiliar and strange, and still had the faint connotation of Marlon Brando's iconic role.

"Here," said Garcia, bringing him back to the present. She passed Henry to Prentiss, who immediately melted, as he had, and started whispering nonsense to the awake-but-not-complaining baby in her arms.

Each member of the team had approached Henry in a different manner – all with gentleness, but a gentleness that fitted their own behavioural paradigm – and it had amused the heck out of Spencer every time a new person had held him. Morgan had turned into a total mother hen, worrying immediately that he was holding him wrong, or that he might hurt him; Rossi, while exuding his usual cool, managed to convey (not quite intentionally) that what he was holding was some kind of baby-shaped grenade.

Hotch, with a couple of years of experience, had looked the most natural of all the team, and he and the new parents had been swapping advice all afternoon. Garcia had simply bubbled with joy from the moment Henry had woken up and wriggled, and couldn't take her eyes off him.

It was very endearing, he decided, grateful that he would be sharing the delights and responsibilities of godparenting with his mad, technicolour friend.

Prentiss, too, seemed to have some experience of miniature humans, because she had no fear of harming him at all, and instead was blowing raspberries on his brushed-cotton clad tummy, much to the astonishment of Henry, who was staring up at her with wide, bemused eyes.

 _One day soon, that's going to be the funniest thing in your whole world,_ thought Spencer, and marvelled at the multifaceted development of human beings, which allowed for moments of sublime and extraordinary cognition, and long, developmental periods, where a face was the most magical thing in the universe.

 _We are all products of our collected moments,_ he mused.

Having had the pleasure of meeting Henry at the hospital, he was content to wait his turn for a cuddle while his colleagues took their fill among the many presents they had brought for him. None of them had been able to resist, and as behavioural experts, they were all, in some way, related to development and learning (except Garcia, who had gone for cute with an adorable giraffe onesie).

It had made Will turn away to hide his chuckles, and, cheerfully detached from the process, Spencer had found this particularly funny. His sense of humour was one of the things that made him perfect for JJ – and his patience, which was a definite requirement around the BAU.

"Oh no! I got your nose!" cried Prentiss, which made Morgan burst out laughing. She looked up, briefly, to glare daggers at him, and then returned her attention to the bewildered baby.

In the seat next to her, he couldn't help notice Pearce's manufactured smile solidify slightly.

Spencer watched her out of the corner of his eye. She'd already moved places twice to avoid having to hold Henry, each time making it look entirely natural. He had been ignoring her quite intently, earlier in the day, but the more times she did it, the more he paid attention. Now, she was sitting extremely stiffly, a tight expression on her face that wasn't entirely hidden beneath the good cheer.

Fortunately, the rest of the team seemed so engrossed with the baby that they weren't paying attention, otherwise she'd have to answer some very uncomfortable questions.

This time, as if she had some kind of preternatural sense for it, she stirred exactly thirty seconds before Prentiss made to pass Henry to her. She was already on her feet, so Will happily took charge of his infant instead.

"Anyone fancy a coffee?" Pearce asked, with an admirably steady voice.

"I can get it," said JJ, beginning to rise.

"No – you two have enough on your hands," she insisted, with a more natural grin. "This one's on me."

"Thanks," said JJ, sinking gratefully back into the armchair, smiling tiredly.

Spencer watched her go, feeling conflicted.

 _This has got to be killing her,_ he thought. _Being around a new baby – and a boy, too…_

 _And I'm the only one on the whole continent who knows about Michael._

Really, this was one of those decisions that more or less made themselves. He cleared his throat. "I'm – uh – I'm gonna go see if she needs any help," he said, and followed Pearce out of the room, keenly aware that the eyes of every agent in the team were fixed on his back, all trying to figure out if they were going to make up or have another fight.

The truth was, as furious as he still was with her, he couldn't leave her to deal with all this on her own. It just wasn't in him.

He closed the kitchen door behind him quietly; Pearce, who was rummaging in a cupboard above the sink, which he dimly remembered contained mugs, cleared her throat.

"Don't worry," she said, trying very hard to sound offhand, "it's all in hand."

Spencer wasn't fooled for a moment. Her body language was tense and brittle, the way she looked when she was fighting emotion, and she was keeping her face carefully obscured by the cupboard door.

"Hey," he said, softly.

Pearce stiffened, a reaction he knew was currently reserved for him. "Someone want tea instead?" she asked briskly, still talking into the cupboard.

"Pearce," he said, moving slowly across the room. He bit his lip. What could he say? He was still too angry with her to form full sentences.

"Really, I've got it under control. It's just hot beverages," she continued, desperately. "I'm making peppermint for JJ, though – she's breastfeeding, you know. Can't have c-caffeine."

Spencer opened his mouth and closed it again, drawing a blank. Instead, he reached out and touched her arm. She spun around, apparently ready for a fight, but stopped when she saw his expression.

"I – er…" she managed, swallowing hard. It was painfully obvious that she had been crying. "Um, I c-can't touch him, I –"

Spencer enveloped her in a hug before she could start sobbing in earnest, intending to muffle the sound, but to his surprise there wasn't any. Her hands were bunched tightly in the back of his cardigan and sobs were wracking her body as she buried her head in his chest, but she wasn't making any noise at all.

"Hey, hey, it's okay," he murmured, wondering why this was a skill she'd ever had to master, and mentally cursing the names of those who had rendered it necessary. "I'm here, I got you. It's okay, Gracie…"

He held her tightly until the sobs began to subside and her breathing began to return to normal.

"This doesn't mean I'm not still massively pissed off at you," she snuffled, into his chest.

Something about the way she said it made him tighten his grip. "I know you are," he said, resting his chin on her head. "I'm pretty damn pissed at you, too."

She made a noise that he was pretty sure was a laugh, and he gave a hollow chuckle.

It was particularly surreal to be standing in the middle of JJ's kitchen, locked in a heartfelt embrace with a colleague that earlier in the day he would have sworn to anyone who would listen that he'd be ecstatic if she transferred back to the UK, rubbing her back and hoping no one in the next room wondered where they were, or why their coffee was taking so long.

Not that that was strictly true, of course. He might currently hate her guts, but the thought of her leaving the BAU made him feel oddly queasy.

"Hey," he said again, pulling away. She looked up at him, her face red and blotchy from crying, and gave him a painful grimace that might have been intended as a smile. "Wash your face. I'll get the coffee."

0o0

Grace perched on the arm of the chair Reid was sitting in, feeling increasingly desperate.

Henry, after a feed, was doing the rounds again, and when they'd brought the coffee back out, everyone staring hopefully at their body language, trying to work out if they were still mortal enemies, the only spare seat had been right in the path of the baby's progress around the room. Baulking at this, she'd met Reid's eyes, and he'd leaned just enough out of the way for her to sit down without it looking too familiar.

She was grateful that she hadn't had to say anything while he'd made coffee and she'd tried to look less like an emotional wreck, and that despite the fact that they were currently at each other's throats, Henry's arrival had provided a tacit, temporary truce.

He was doing quite a lot of deflection now, in his own, slightly ineffectual way.

If they ever got to a point where they could form full sentences again without glaring, she would tell him how much she appreciated it.

She swallowed, hard, when Hotch passed Henry to Reid, and mentally counted down the seconds until she reached a full two minutes.

"Well, I think I'm going to head," she announced, getting up and stretching.

"Are you sure?" JJ asked, surprised.

Although they'd been there for a couple of hours, most people were intending to stay a while longer.

"Yeah, I'm not feeling so hot."

She got her jacket and scarf while the others made noises of concern or disappointment, and hugged both JJ and Will, contriving to avoid touching the little boy in Reid's arms. She did give him an awkward little wave, though, before promising Garcia she'd call her if she got sick and walking stiffly out of the house.

It was pretty hard to maintain the illusion that she wasn't actually fleeing, so she focussed on the path at the edge of the garden, telling herself that she only had to reach that, and then she could pick a new goal, and new one after that, keeping her steady until she got home and could shut out the world. She was almost there when she heard her name called.

"Hey, Grace!"

It was Will; steeling herself, she turned to find him jogging along the path after her.

"Did I forget something?" she asked, genuinely surprised.

She even raised her hands to check her bag and pockets, but nothing was amiss.

"No, I – uh… I wan'ed to talk to you," he said, his Louisiana drawl picking out consonants and plucking others out of the way. "You okay?"

He looked so earnest and so concerned, standing on the edge of his lawn, his hands in his pockets, watching her response.

 _Well, of course,_ she thought, _he is a cop. I'd imagined it would be one of the others, but maybe they're too focussed on other things right now._

"I'm fine," she lied, and saw the lick of the lips and minute narrowing of the eyes that meant he'd caught it.

"Yeah," he said, looking away. "Yeah, I jus' – uh…" He met her eyes, and she knew she was in for it. "You won' go anywhere near my son, and I – uh – I jus' wan'ed to know why."

Grace scrutinised his face for a moment, then nodded wryly, understanding. "You're hyperaware."

"If you like," he said, with that small flick of a smile. It always suggested he was hiding something – or that he knew more than he was letting on.

The more analytical part of Grace wondered whether he knew that, or if it was an unconscious result of his police background.

"He's two weeks old, I gotta keep my eye on 'm."

It was Grace's turn to have the corners of her mouth twitch upwards. "And you consider me a threat?"

"I consider you a friend," he replied, quite seriously. "And, I think, one tha's hur'in'."

Grace dropped her gaze, feeling mildly chastened. Humour, her go-to distraction technique, wasn't going to help her here.

"So, I'm gonna ask again: you okay?"

Grace swallowed, focussing on the ground in front of Will's feet. Ever since she'd set out from London, two years before, she had been dreading this moment. Sooner or later, given their work, someone was bound to have asked.

It had felt different, telling Reid. They had been friends then, and indisputably more than that, on some, unexamined level. It had been hard, but ultimately cathartic. Telling Will, though…

"I…" She opened her mouth, and for a moment no sound came out at all. "I had a son," she said, her throat constricting around the words. "And he died."

She registered Will's little gasp of shock, and carried on. "I never got to hold him. And Henry is beautiful, but I just – I just can't –"

"Grace, I am so, _so_ sorry."

Feeling a hand at her elbow, she looked up to find that Will was right in front of her, looking even more earnest than before. She wondered, absently, whether it was a quality he somehow managed to store for when he needed it.

She gave a small shake of her head to tell him that it was okay. "It's an old pain," she managed to say, with a brittle smile.

"But it's righ' at the surface now," he guessed.

Grace nodded, sadly.

"Does… do any o' them know?" he asked, nodding towards the house behind him.

She shook her head. "Only Reid."

Will nodded again, understanding. "JJ…"

"I know. She'll ask because of Henry. She's as good a profiler as the rest of us."

"Yeah," he agreed, with affection. "If you ever wanna talk," he offered. "You know where to find me."

Genuinely touched, Grace's smile was a lot more honest this time. "Thank you."

"I ough'a get back," he said, after a moment. "Or –"

"Or they'll ask," she finished.

He chuckled. "Profilers."

"Gotta love us," she joked, though it sounded bitter, even to her. "Bye, Will."

"See you…"

She felt his eyes on her most of the way down the short, suburban street, and wondered how long he would be able to avoid telling JJ. The unspoken agreement in his words had assured her that the others wouldn't know, but his wife was a different matter altogether.

Sighing, she turned up her collar, feeling cold despite the warm afternoon air, and slowly made her way back to her empty home.


	15. 52 Pickup

**Essential listening: This is Love, by PJ Harvey**

0o0

"I just don't get why the coffee line gets longer every day," Todd complained.

Grace snorted. She wasn't wrong. Having both arrived early because of planned disruption on the AMTRACK that morning, they had headed out together to the coffee shop a couple of blocks away. It was infinitely better than the watery stuff they served in the cafeteria, which Grace had only been into twice in the entire time she'd worked in the building, and was worth a brisk walk in the sunshine.

By the time they'd got there, the line had been out of the door. It was taking the piss a little, for mid-morning.

"It is faintly ridiculous," Grace remarked. "But I think the one across from it is still closed from that burst water main. I guess their customers need caffeine as much as we do."

Todd laughed. "Yeah, but I can't wait until they go back. It's damaging efficiency around here!"

She gave a little wave, heading briskly out of the lift and along the corridor that ran along the side of the bullpen. Grace continued on to her desk, in a contemplative mood.

As personable as Todd could be when she wasn't stressed, Grace had a hard time liking her. Not that she would ever say anything to her – the job was hard enough without that sort of thing – and given how new she was to the department, Grace didn't want to put any additional pressure on her. She had been polite and as cheerful as she could, while endeavouring not to come across like she was trying too hard, but had kept their conversations and contact to as few and as little as possible.

It wasn't the woman's fault, really. You couldn't like everybody.

It didn't help that Todd's quick temper and occasional arrogance reminded her strongly of the impetuous young police officer she had boxed up and left behind in London. She was ambitious and a little reckless, and Grace knew first-hand how far and fast that could make you fall – taking the people around you along for the ride.

She hoped, with a little more experience, Todd's rougher edges would be rounded out; for her sake, if no one else's.

It was a shame, she reflected, given how well she got on with the rest of the team.

Grace looked up in time to see Reid wander past, deep in a philosophical argument with Rossi, and mentally amended that thought.

 _Well, most of them._

"Hey, looks like we're rollin'," said Morgan, tapping her on the shoulder as he walked past.

Grace nodded, grabbing her notes, pen and tea, and followed her colleagues into the situation room, where an enthusiastic Todd had set up a presentation.

With a smile at Grace that the other woman didn't feel like returning, Todd waited until the whole team was settled before launching into an introduction to their latest victim.

"Vanessa Holden, aged twenty-five," said Todd, indicating a photograph of a vivacious and well-groomed young blonde on the screen. "Last Friday night she went clubbing with her sister. A stranger – white, male, roughly her age – picked her up. They left the club at one a.m. and went back to her place. He forced her on her hands and knees," she went on, changing the picture of the living, happy-looking woman to an image of her disembowelled corpse. "And then he cut her open, just below the stomach."

"Whoa," Morgan exclaimed, putting down his coffee.

Grace shook her head, tutting. "That's a hard way to go."

"Yeah, pretty rough," Rossi remarked.

"Gutting causes the intestines to spill out," Reid stated, as if anyone needed to know. "You can survive for a few hours actually. Even days."

Todd nodded. "Post-mortem indicates that he slit her throat at five a.m.," she told them, unconsciously mimicking the cut with her hand.

"So he disembowelled her, but didn't kill her for four hours," Rossi observed, raising his salt-and-pepper eyebrows.

"Could be a sexual sadist," Emily suggested.

"Yeah, I thought so too," Todd agreed, handing out a fresh pile of files. "But I found two priors from the year before – prostitutes, actually, in motel rooms."

There was a brief pause as the agents assimilated the bare bones of this new information.

 _Interesting_ , thought Grace. _Prostitutes and confident club girls are very different victims._

"Okay, so keep runnin' with it," Morgan encouraged. "Why do you think it's the same unsub?"

Todd turned back to the screen and hit another button, showing the crime scene photos from the three murders side by side. "In Vanessa Holden's apartment, the following were discovered," Todd reported. "Bleach, ammonia, trash bags." She clicked her pointer again, and the image became a close-up of these items. "All in a triangular pattern. One year ago, motel rooms." She moved the presentation along again; now there were three sets of cleaning products. "Bleach, ammonia, trash bags – also in a triangular pattern."

"He's got a ritual," Grace remarked, surprised. At once, her mind sprang to the many occult uses of triangles, threes, and organised patterns.

"He's cleaning up," Emily realised, perplexed.

"Maybe tryin' to hide his tracks?" Morgan surmised.

"Could be a sign of remorse," Reid proposed.

Rossi agreed. "Apologising for the murder by minimising the mess."

"But there's one other commonality between both sets of murders," Todd told them, with a hint of excitement at having spotted it. "Bleach and ammonia were found under the victims' fingernails."

 _Oh gods_ , Grace thought.

Around the room, every agent gasped or made noises of disgust.

"He's making them clean up their own murder," Morgan realised, aghast.

Hotch nodded, frowning deeply. "It's the same unsub."

0o0

 _The minute people fall in love, they become liars._

 _Harlan Ellison_

0o0

"So, if the unsub changed victimology does that make him organised or disorganised?" Prentiss asked.

The jet was very quiet today, as everyone tried to absorb three cases at high speed.

"Well, prostitutes point one way, club girls another," Morgan asserted, from his perch on top of the side table, across from the main group.

Hotch, who was next to him, nodded.

"It could be like the Stephen Griffiths case in Bradford," Grace mused. "He didn't switch victimology, but he did change his target area."

"The Triangular arrangement of the cleaning supplies is interesting," Reid observed.

He seemed more tense than he usually did at the start of a case, Grace mused. Probably because they were heading back to Georgia. Still, he had a whole jet full of people to keep an eye on him; it wasn't her job.

"Obsessive compulsive?" Hotch suggested.

"Might have been institutionalised," Prentiss added, frowning.

"We're missing the forest for the trees here," said Rossi, putting down his file. The rest of the team looked up, ready for his latest nugget of wisdom. "This guy started with prostitutes – that's a high-risk victimology. Took a year off, came back, killed a socialite."

"No forced entry, no coercion of any kind," Morgan added, summarising the file.

"It's like he's changed his whole persona," Grace remarked, leaning on the back of Rossi's seat. "It's interesting, too, that he managed to keep his cycle in check for that length of time."

 _He must have had a goal in mind._

"Exactly," said Rossi. "So how does our unsub go from loser of the year to Don Juan?"

"Actually, as Byron interpreted him, Don Juan was an ironic reversal of sex roles," Reid remarked, giving a little laugh of enjoyment at the knowledge, "and, when –" He looked up, met Hotch's eyes and looked back down again, clearly realising he was off topic. "And, uh – that's about it," he said, frowning down at his files, embarrassed.

He cleared his throat awkwardly as the rest of the team stared at him.

"Something must have happened between the last two and Vanessa Holden to make him change his victimology," Hotch said, after a moment.

"Could the unsub have known Vanessa?" Todd asked.

"Unlikely," Morgan responded. "Sexual sadists attack anonymously."

"They have to sever a personal connection and see their victims as objects to perpetrate this level of torture," Reid explained.

"She does fit the physical attributes of his victimology, though," Grace observed. "Mid-twenties, blonde, beautiful… only the background differs."

"We have to build two profiles, then," Prentiss mused. "One for the unsub who killed prostitutes, one for the unsub who goes to clubs."

"We've never done that before," Rossi remarked, raising an impressive brow.

"Prentiss is right," Hotch told them. "The victims' backgrounds are so different we'll treat them as separate unsubs and see what overlaps."

"The devil's in the details," Grace observed.

"Reid, work up a geographic profile. Focus on the location of the murders," Hotch instructed. "Prentiss and Rossi, concentrate on the prostitutes; Jordan, Morgan, Pearce and I will go deal with Vanessa Holden."

0o0

The Atlanta Police Department was quiet when they arrived. The desk sergeant, having signed them in, ushered them through to a side room, where there was a conference table and several boards set up, covered in crime scene photos.

On one end of the table, a woman with long red hair was sitting, frowning at the file in her lap. She rose when she saw them and went to shake Agent Todd's hand.

"Detective Harding, hi," said Todd, shaking the proffered hand. "Agent Jordan Todd."

"Hi, thank you for coming," said Harding, warmly.

Her eyes were bright and intelligent, and her countenance open and obviously gregarious, despite the occasion, though not overly so. Grace sensed a woman who brooked no nonsense in her professional life, and wholeheartedly approved.

"SSAs Hotchner, Morgan, Pearce, Doctor Reid." Todd gestured to them all in turn.

"Hi, how are you? Welcome," said Harding, doing the rounds and shaking hands with everyone except Reid, who gave his trademark little wave instead. She was obviously glad to see them which was good news in terms of cooperation, but bad news since it increased the likeliness of a problematic case.

"Is there a DNA match between the unsub in the prostitute cases? We can run it through VICAP, just in case," Reid asked, getting stuck straight in.

Harding looked suddenly weary – Grace suspected that was a 'no'.

"Uh – there's no DNA at all," the detective told them sadly. "No prints, no fibres – just like the others. Everything gets cleaned up."

Morgan grimaced. "Pretty effective forensic countermeasure."

"What about witnesses?" Hotch asked. "Somebody must have seen something."

"Or heard it," Grace pointed out. "Disembowelling's not a quiet method of torture."

"Oh yeah, lots of people," Harding agreed, with a smirk that told them that it wasn't quite as straightforward as that.

"So, you have a sketch?" Morgan put in, hopefully.

Harding handed it to him. Grace peered over Morgan's shoulder, giving a low whistle.

"That's pretty generic," she remarked.

"It is a little vague," Reid agreed, peering over Morgan's other shoulder.

"That's because of this guy's _other_ countermeasure," Harding told them. "Take a look." She led them to a screen, where she hit a few buttons; CCTV footage from the club where Vanessa Holden had been last seen appeared. "So, this guy right here," she pointed out a man in a dark jacket and a hat who was chatting to the victim and another woman – presumably her sister. "That's our killer."

"Looks like a fedora," Todd observed.

Hotch frowned. "So he's drawing attention to his face, while simultaneously obscuring it."

"It's called peacocking," Reid explained. "The adornment of some sort of flashy affect to distract witnesses."

"Looks like it worked," Grace remarked, looking at the sketch.

"So, none of your witness statements agree?" Morgan predicted.

Harding shook her head. "He had a mole, he didn't have a mole. He had a gap between his teeth, no his teeth were perfect…"

"Detective, we're going to have to have a sit down with Ashleigh Holden," Todd said. "She got the best look at the unsub."

"Well, I wish I could make that happen," Harding commiserated, "but unfortunately the family has decided to stop cooperating."

Grace raised her eyebrows, surprised, as her colleagues exchanged glances. That was something they hadn't anticipated, particularly in a case like this.

"Why's that?" Hotch asked.

"They wouldn't say." Hardy shrugged, helplessly. "Yesterday, the mother would have moved heaven and Earth to help find her daughter's killer. Today, no thanks."

"You said these girls were socialites?" Grace asked. "The family's wealthy?"

It was Todd who nodded, having done a significant amount of research before they arrived. "Yeah, they're pretty much at the top of the pile."

"Then they have a name to protect."

"At the cost of finding their daughter's murderer?" Reid asked, in obvious disbelief.

"Money, family name," Grace mused. "There are people the world over who are prepared to kill to protect that, let alone let a killer go free. And bad blood follows money. Maybe they don't want Ashleigh branded as the girl who got her sister killed?"

Todd took out her phone and headed out of the room. "I'll take care of this." She started making a call – probably to Garcia – even as she walked away.

0o0

The Holden residence was large and beautiful.

It reminded Grace of the rare, brick-built Tudor mansions back home, and may have intentionally mirrored them. The gardens, too, were lovely. Clearly, the Holden girls had grown up privileged. The four agents were shown inside by a housekeeper that Grace was only slightly surprised wasn't wearing a Victorian maid's outfit. Looking around, she could tell at once that the Holdens were old money. Their wealth wasn't showy, but everything they owned was elegant. No wonder there was a social media backlash against the girls – they had had everything handed to them on a plate.

No one deserved the kind of end Vanessa had had, though – or the kind of guilt Ashleigh would be going through.

No. There was no one at fault here but the unsub, plain and simple.

"Good afternoon." She greeted them sadly, but everything about Mrs Holden's body language said this was a family matter and they were grateful for the Bureau's interest, but no thank you. "I'm sorry you came all the way out here. It's a waste of time. Ashleigh knows absolutely nothing and we want to get this behind us as soon as possible."

"We understand that ma'am," said Grace gently, her voice unconsciously shifting to an 'I'm dealing with privilege and they're not used to bossy' tone. "All we're interested in is catching the person who hurt your daughter. It's likely that there are things Ashleigh remembers, but doesn't realise the importance of. If we could sit down with her and talk things through, it might give her a little closure."

"No, no, I'm quite sure," said Mrs Holden, her present fragility beginning to penetrate her demeanour. "Thank you again."

"Mrs Holden, we can't begin to fathom the loss you have suffered," said Todd, in a conciliatory tone.

"That's right, you can't," Mrs Holden

 _Because no one's ever lost anyone ever before_ , Grace thought, and then decided that was unfair. Grief did a lot of different things to a person, and one of the things it did was make you feel isolated.

Todd stepped forward and something in her manner altered. Grace saw it; she thought Hotch and Morgan probably had, too. Mrs Holden, however, had not. "But, um, I lost my older sister in a car crash – and it was really hard on our family, because she was the responsible one. _She_ was the one that my mother always counted on to watch over us."

Grace narrowed her eyes. This was a lie. It had to be. And Todd was evidently good at selling it. A clever lie, geared towards the exact circumstances of the Holdens and the impact Vanessa's death was having on them, but a lie nonetheless.

"And when she died," Todd continued, maintaining eye contact with Mrs Holden, "my mother wouldn't let the police in. I think she thought if she didn't let them in then my sister really wasn't dead."

She paused for effect.

 _This was a dangerous bloody game,_ Grace thought. _Dangerous, foolish, and cruel – if Mrs Holden spotted the lie..._

Todd had the woman's attention, though, however underhand she had gone about it. Grace tried to keep her face blank. If Todd was found out at this stage, the Holdens would never let them in, and the chances of catching their daughter's murderer would be slim to none.

"This man," Todd exclaimed, "is a monster, and we _can_ catch him, but we need your daughter's help."

Mrs Holden looked at them all individually, sad and sober and brittle. "If you accuse her – of anything –"

"Ma'am." Morgan tried to mollify her. They weren't about to do that.

"I will be on the phone so fast –"

"Ma'am, ma'am," Morgan said again, placatingly. "We won't."

"We're here to help, not to make this worse for you and your daughter," Grace told her, pleased to discover Mrs Holden's reluctance to help was more about protecting her other daughter than anything else.

The grieving mother sniffed and put her glasses back on, pulling herself together. "Alright. Follow me."

Todd did as she was told, but the others hung back a moment.

"Did you know that about Jordan?" Morgan asked, when they'd passed out of the room – and, crucially, out of earshot.

"No, and neither did she," said Hotch. "According to her file, she's an only child."

Grace and Morgan exchanged a speaking look. Although it had been obvious that Todd was lying, she had expected at least a grain of truth in there somewhere. Grace shook her head. You don't play with shit like that.

They followed the others into the living room, where Ashleigh was almost cowering on the sofa, her mother beside her, straight-backed and protective. The younger Holden girl was obviously very shaken up and obviously very upset; the agents sat on the couch opposite her, endeavouring to look as non-threatening as possible.

After a few minutes of calming pleasantry, her mother and Agent Todd absented themselves, the one feeling that Ashleigh could cope, and the other determined to keep the family cooperating at any cost.

Ashleigh sniffed when they asked her to take them through the night her sister had been abducted, but she spoke strongly, if sadly. There was nothing brittle about her, which Grace, whose own experiences of grief had been wide and varied, took as a good sign. "Vanessa's boyfriend just broke up with her, so I took her out to, you know…"

"To cheer her up," Grace finished, and Ashleigh Holden nodded.

Morgan nodded back, encouragingly. "There's nothing wrong with that."

"Were you approached by anyone?" Hotch asked.

"Guys," said Ashleigh, with a shrug.

"Can you describe any of them for us?" Morgan prompted.

"Ordinary," Ashleigh replied, with a touch of haughtiness that Grace suspected she'd got from her mother. "Look, Vanessa wasn't even in the mood."

"So, if she wasn't in the mood," Hotch speculated, "if she left with this guy then there must have been something about him – something unique."

Ashleigh shrugged again.

"Try to think back," Grace said gently. "Did he make her laugh, maybe?"

Another shrug.

"We saw his picture on the surveillance and we know that he was dressed like a rocker," Morgan told her. "So he was pretty flashy, right?"

Ashleigh made a head movement that managed to convey 'I suppose' without even moving her mouth. She was fighting back tears now, but that couldn't be helped. As hard as this was for her, it was necessary.

"What was the first thing you noticed about him?" Morgan asked patiently.

"Ha," she snorted. "His attitude."

"What about it? Was he cocky? Confident? Or did he play it more the broody type?" Grace asked.

"You know, he was like – he was hitting on us, but he was making a joke out of it at the same time," she told them.

"So, he was using humour," Grace reflected, and Ashleigh nodded.

"Even his eyes – they were different colours," she remembered suddenly, frowning.

"So this guy wanted to be noticed," Morgan proposed.

"Well, yeah," Ashleigh scoffed, a touch derisively. "But that's why you go to a club, right?"

Morgan nodded, accepting this.

"He had – he had these games," she continued. "Like, he would bet us drinks that we couldn't get his number. Or this other one," she sniffed, remembering. "He'd take pictures of us and tell us the camera added ten pounds, and then show it to us and it would be a shot of an entirely different woman."

She started to cry. "She didn't even wanna go out that night. I had to drag her to the club. The last thing she said to me, before I left her alone with that guy was 'I had the best time tonight'."

Grace's heart broke for her.

"The _best_ time."

"Ashleigh," said Grace, taking her hand. "This is _not_ your fault. Don't let anyone ever tell you that it is."

She bit her lip, but she nodded, and Grace let her have her hand back.

0o0

They questioned Ashleigh for another twenty minutes, but she couldn't tell them much more than she already had. The young woman seemed a little shaky, but Grace got the impression that being able to talk it through with people who didn't judge her – and the fact that she'd helped the investigation – had steadied her a little. If they caught the guy now, her involvement would help her in the future, too.

She and her mother were walking the agents to the door, unconsciously reclaiming their territory.

"Thank you again for your help," Grace said, shaking both their hands. "We'll do everything we can to find him."

She started down the drive, the door closing behind her, and caught up with the others, who were a little way ahead.

"The information on Vanessa Holden being the responsible sister," Hotch asked Todd. "Where did you get that?"

Grace glanced ahead at Morgan, who was also pretending not to eavesdrop.

 _Uh oh…_

"Some of it was online and some of it was just an educated guess based on birth order," Todd reported, sounding pretty pleased with herself.

"A guess," said Hotch sounding less than pleased with her. "And in the process you lied."

"That mother was shut down," Todd protested, sounding a little defensive. "I needed to establish some rapport."

Grace winced, slowing down so she didn't run into them when they stopped and carried on past as if nothing was happening. She could still hear the conversation loud and clear, however.

"I don't know how you did things in Counter Terrorism, but we don't make a habit of having to lie to get the job done," said Hotch, in a tone that brooked no argument.

Todd didn't appear to hear it, however.

"I – got you in the door didn't I?" Todd asked, sounding puzzled, but still pleased with herself.

She obviously didn't get it; and she wasn't remotely sorry.

 _She doesn't even get why it's a problem,_ Grace thought, a little annoyed.

There was a pause where Hotch stared her down. "Not only do you represent the FBI, you represent this team," he said, openly admonishing now. "To the press, to the police and to the families who are struggling through some of the hardest times of their lives."

Grace glanced back and caught a glimpse of Todd's face. She looked like she'd figured out she was being dressed down now, but not why.

"If you get caught in a lie, the trust we depend on to help solve these crimes disappears," Hotch lectured her. "Do I make myself clear?"

Todd nodded, though she still didn't look like she got it. "It won't happen again."

There was just a hint about her expression that suggested she thought Hotch was having her on; it wasn't lost on him.

"No, it won't," he said, assessing her less than remorseful expression. After a moment he continued in a commanding tone, "When you get back I want you to prepare a press release about the unsub. _Do not_ release it. From now on, everything goes through me."

Her expression fell, all traces of humour gone.

Hotch's phone went and he turned his attention away, effectively dismissing her. "Yeah, Dave?" He walked around the car to take the call further away, further emphasising the trust she had lost.

Grace shared another glance with Morgan, aware that Todd was looking at them both rather in the manner of a sulky teenager.

"So, how bad did I just screw up?" Todd asked Morgan, who stared at her.

 _She really doesn't get it,_ thought Grace, and got in the car, leaving the grounding to Morgan. Feeling weary, she didn't want to be a part of this argument and she was aware, no matter what he said, she going to be stuck in the back seat with a sulky Jordan Todd all the way back to the Altanta Police Department anyway.

She settled into her seat, privately of the opinion that the wayward temporary media liaison ought to have had more of a reprimand than simple work monitoring and a quiet dressing down. If Todd had been one of her junior colleagues back at Cross Bones, she would have had her on administrative duties until she was sure she could trust her again.

 _But then,_ she thought, _Hotch did recently let me off punching a colleague._

She stayed quiet, even when the others got in the SUV, consciously distancing herself. Hotch may not like it, but it solved a lot of problems, she felt.


	16. Snakes

**Essential listening: Blurred Lines, by Robin Thicke**

0o0

The team were clustered around a break in the desks, reading files and checking the press, given how prominent the Holdens were. Reid came back in with a coffee, bringing one for Derek, too. He accepted it gratefully. Breaking it to Todd just how badly she had screwed up had soured his even temper, and the details of the case were not helping him regain it.

Though the others had already had beverages, notably Pearce hadn't, and Reid had neglected to offer her anything. It saddened Derek a little. He had hoped, as had the others, that their battered friendship had undergone some repair after Reid had followed her into JJ's kitchen the week before. Sadly, despite the cessation of open hostilities (which was a relief), and though they no longer snapped at each other in reviews or briefings, they also never really interacted. It was as though each one had fallen out of the other one's reality.

And despite the best efforts of the rest of the team, it felt like Pearce was shutting herself off from them.

 _Well,_ he thought, _we're not going to let that happen without a fight._

"The unsub killed the prostitutes in separate pay-by-the-hour motels in Fulton County." Reid pointed at the board, bringing Derek back to the job at hand. "Right there. One of the poorer neighbourhoods in the area. Now, Vanessa Holden's apartment was in the Peach Tree district. There's a lot of big money. Based on the geography, he isn't just changing his victimology, he's changing his whole tax bracket."

"Well, the high profile of Vanessa Holden bears that out," Derek reflected. "By killin' her he was climbin' the social ladder."

"If that's the case, this unsub had a long way to climb," Rossi remarked, reading the local low-brow paper. "Both prostitutes advertised here. Look at their pictures."

The team leaned in and across one another, frowning at the pictures the prostitutes had used; they were all tied up in submissive, pleading poses.

"Subservient positioning, asking to be dominated," Hotch observed

"Promising to come to you," Prentiss surmised. "Cuts out the social interaction of meeting on a street corner."

"It's a long way from a self-assured unsub who hits the clubs," Derek exclaimed.

"Yeah, except he took a year off between the murders," Hotch pointed out. "Maybe he – took that time to change himself."

Derek shook his head. "That's impossible."

"No, it's not," Pearce argued. "You can change your style, get a confidence boost – even getting a new job might have given him the fresh start he needed to make changes."

Morgan looked at her out of the corner of his eye, wondering what changes Pearce had made when she came to Virginia.

"I mean, you're talkin' about a total transformation here," Derek protested. "I mean, how you talk, how you dress, how you think about yourself…"

"Difficult, maybe," Hotch said, "not impossible."

"He already started killing," Rossi observed. "There must've been a secondary trigger that motivated him to change who he was. So, if you're gonna transform yourself, how would you do it?"

"Uh, a steady diet of self-help books," Prentiss theorised. "Start hitting the gym."

"You'd have to learn how to read people," Reid suggested. "I mean, what is a – a pick up? It's basically just a profile."

"Decoding cues of interest and recoding similar ones," Derek agreed.

"If you're too obvious you turn off your target," Prentiss nodded. "If you're oblivious, your target moves onto a better profiler."

"You've got to be memorable for the right reasons, instead of just creepy," Pearce added.

"It doesn't sound like something he could do on his own," Hotch mused.

"No, he'd have to go somewhere to learn it."

"Self-help class, maybe?" Reid proposed.

"Uh – now, wait a minute. Come on," Derek shook his head. "An unsub who's killin' prostitutes? Is he really thinkin' about signin' up for a Tony Robin seminar?"

"Well, he would," said Rossi, taking a sheet out of the paper he'd been perusing. "If he found the class in the same place as he found the prostitutes."

They passed it around. Derek cast his eyes over it, feeling revolted at the demeaning language.

' _Learn how to pick up chicks. Let's face it, we all want to have sex, but women are a mystery. Take my class and learn how to unlock desire.'_

"Oh God," Prentiss exclaimed, disgusted, as Pearce made fake gagging sounds. "There's even an industry for learning how to be a creep?"

0o0

Grace stood amongst half of her colleagues, gazing at another blood pool on another street.

Sometimes it felt like she was simply moving from one to another, in an endless parade of gore. She shifted her gaze to Reid, briefly, and then looked away. The call had come in very early, and the entire team had rolled out of bed, tired, grouchy and squinting, and had only really properly woken up on the drive over.

Somehow, she and Reid had ended up in the back of the same car, both sleepy and not really prepared for polite conversation, and had spent a largely silent half hour, trying to pretend that the other simply wasn't there.

It had been complicated, somewhat, by how tousled and sleepy he looked. It aggravated Grace how cute that made him; she was only grateful that he wasn't wearing his purple shirt today, which in her experience made him even more distracting.

The outside of the crime scene resembled something like an up-scale, modernist art installation.

The entire street was made up of up-market apartment buildings; black and chrome structures, lifted here and there with neon accents on the balconies and doors. The deep crimson stain on the concrete, adorned around the edges with yellow and orange evidence markers, was particularly striking in this context.

Their latest victim had fallen pretty damn far.

As one, Grace, Rossi, Reid and Morgan squinted up to the victim's apartment to see Prentiss peering down at them from the balcony.

"Well, preliminary autopsy came back." Morgan scratched his head. "Victim's name was Becky Williams."

They all looked down at the sad splat on the ground in front of them.

"Was she disembowelled?" Rossi asked.

"No, and what's even weirder is the cleanin' supplies were set out, but there were no traces of them on her body," Morgan told them.

He'd arrived in the first car and been debriefed while the rest of them had been stuck in traffic.

"Why would the unsub alter his signature and push her out of an eight story window?" Reid asked.

"Escalatin' his sadism, maybe?" Morgan suggested.

"Gutting and cleaning are what he needs to do to find release," Rossi pointed out. "He wouldn't change that."

"She fought back," Grace said simply. "I would've, if a guy I'd brought home got out a huge knife – especially three days after Vanessa Holden's murder was all over the press. Either they struggled and she went over, or she was drunk and terrified and ran the wrong way."

The four agents looked up again, imagining Becky William's last moments.

"Did anyone see the unsub?" Reid asked.

"No surveillance cameras at the club," Morgan said heavily. "Becky's friends say she was talkin' to a guy with sunglasses."

"Sunglasses…" Reid repeated.

"If his ritual was disrupted he might be driven to kill again," Grace reflected.

"The clubs will be packed tonight, it's a Saturday," Morgan complained.

"The perfect hunting ground," Grace mused, thinking of the enormous potential victim pool.

"I think there might be a new pattern emerging," Reid murmured, thoughtfully. "I gotta talk to Hotch."

0o0

They had arrived back at the Atlanta Police Department, tired from the early start and all a little wired from the volume of caffeine they had ingested. They'd clustered around a computer, where Spencer was expounding on his disguise theory.

"Garcia, you ready?" he asked.

If his theory was correct then they would have something they could release to the press. It might save a life, and right now, with this unsub's escalated timescale, they badly needed that.

" _Sending it now,"_ Garcia responded. _"Please be aware that thirty minutes with Photoshop does not allow for much artistic flourish."_

The sketch appeared, with a little electronic burble.

"Both times the unsub has gone to a club he's worn some element of costume," Spencer explained. "But now there's a theme." He clicked on the 'next' button and the picture changed accordingly. "Fedora and coloured contacts." He clicked again. "Sunglasses. Each time obscuring – are you are you ready, Garcia?"

The picture, no longer under Spencer's control, zoomed in to show only the top half of the unsub's face.

"This area," Spencer said, pointing it out. "Now, yes, maybe he's trying to draw attention to himself, or maybe he's trying to draw attention away from here."

Far away in Washington, Garcia added a variety of scars or marks to the picture, always around the eyes.

Rossi nodded. "Something he knows is identifiable. A birthmark, or a scar maybe?"

"We need to get these out," said Hotch, decisively. "Jordan, release these to the press."

0o0

Having hit gold with her research into the make-yourself-into-a-creep workshops, Emily hurried back into the room the Atlanta Police Department had allocated them to discover Hotch watching the press conference hawkishly, in case Todd made a mistake. Emily frowned, concerned; that wasn't good. The team worked better if Hotch trusted them, not least because they had faith in themselves and knew he always had their back. Though word travelled fast and she knew how stupid Todd's stunt with the family had been, and how costly it might prove, you couldn't expect someone to prove themselves trustworthy if their every move was scrutinised.

"Hotch."

Noticing her presence, he turned the TV off. "What did you find out?"

"Uh of the twenty self-described pick up artist classes in the area, there's only one guy who encourages his students to dress like – uh… space cowboys," she told him, holding up the advert from the paper. "Are you ready to meet 'Viper'?"

Hotch quirked an eyebrow.

0o0

As hard as he tried, Aaron couldn't entirely force the expression of incredulity off his face. He suspected it was manifesting as a sort of all-purpose grimace. 'Viper's' self-help group was held in a nightclub off the main drag, in the unforgiving light of mid-afternoon. They had walked in after it had started, and then been physically unable to interrupt, partly because they needed this guy's help, and partly because none of them could actually believe what he was saying. It was psychologically fascinating – and horrifying.

The agents had arrayed themselves at the back, out of the way, aware that at least part of this display of 'masculinity' was now for their benefit.

The flamboyant leader of the workshop was dressed like an extra from _Interview with a Vampire_. He had eyeliner around his eyes, along with rather too many piercings to be elegant; Aaron had nothing against piercings, but he generally preferred it when it looked like the wearer had put some thought into where they ought to go. He was twirling – actually _twirling_ – a purple crushed velvet top hat in his hands.

The sight of it briefly transported Aaron back to the eighties, trying to talk to Hayley over the club's PA in a dark bar full of New Romantics. He brushed the bittersweet memories aside, trying to focus.

"Men are put on this Earth to hunt women," Viper claimed, grandstanding. "And even though women deny it, they _wanna_ be hunted. They _need_ it. It's part of our biology as animals."

"I might hit him," Pearce murmured, conversationally.

Although he completely agreed, Aaron gave her a sideways look; though he usually tolerated her quirky sense of humour, this particular comment was not entirely funny given the last few weeks.

She didn't look particularly contrite when she glanced at his unimpressed expression. "I'll try not to."

"And the competition the opposite sex puts you through, pitting you against other guys? Against your own friends, even? It's all to reassure themselves that they have brought home the best possible mate."

The men in Viper's class nodded their agreement, draining Aaron's faith in humanity.

"They want someone who's gonna make their eyeballs roll back in their heads," Viper told them, giving what he obviously considered to be a provocative little wiggle. "My job is to help you slash past every defence, every excuse, every 'whiny voice', 'why don't you meet my friends?' trick that they're going to throw at you."

Pearce shifted. Aaron could sense her anger, and for a moment he worried that her earlier comment had been serious. "How about a guy who treats people with respect?" she muttered, but didn't make a move.

Aaron relaxed, reassured that his agent had herself in check. Not that he didn't entirely understand her disgust. The language Viper was using alone was distressing. It was violent and dangerous, used to turn women into objects in his speech – and objects of utter contempt.

"You may not have ripped abs, or be able to afford table service, but if you're smarter and –" Viper paused in order to flip his hat onto his head, "- more interesting, then you will be a better predator."

Aaron raised an eyebrow at his choice of phrase.

"Because this is the jungle, my friends, and your prey _wants_ to be caught."

"Will you listen to that language?" Morgan asked, from Aaron's other side. "He's trainin' serial killers!"

"Great," Prentiss complained. "We're dealing with a rampant narcissist and misogynist who's turned himself into a snake oil salesman."

"Just one more thing he has in common with our unsub," Aaron reflected.

"Sadly," Pearce observed, looking at his programme, "he's got so many classes that I don't think he'd have time to murder anybody."

They waited for the class, which had drawn to a close, to break up before approaching their teacher. If the unsub was among his flock, they didn't want to give him a head start. Viper, however seemed unconcerned to hear that he might have created a monster.

"So you think this – what'd you call him? Unsub? Is one of my clients?" he asked, surprised.

"He copied your 'the camera adds ten pounds routine', verbatim," Aaron told him., struggling to keep his voice and face level and reasonably friendly.

Viper chuckled. "Yeah, that's a good gag!"

"It's a great one," Pearce remarked. "Got some people killed."

Aaron shot her a warning look, but Viper did not appear to care.

"If you could just give us your attendance lists, it might help us find him," Prentiss suggested.

Viper turned his gaze on her, then on Pearce, and his entire body language changed. "No," he said, lightly.

"No?" Prentiss exclaimed, astonished.

"My clients expect a certain amount of confidentiality," Viper told them smugly. "I won't compromise that."

"We can come back with a warrant," Aaron pointed out.

"Be my guest," said Viper, expansively. "But keep in mind the money I make doesn't just pay for my –" he paused and ran his eyes over the women again, "- fabulous lifestyle. It also keeps some very expensive lawyers on retainer."

"So, let me just get this straight – you don't want to help us find someone who is disembowelling people for fun?" Pearce clarified, with a tilt of her head that Aaron recognised as a warning sign.

Morgan, too, shifted uneasily, perhaps recognising something in the false lightness of her voice.

"No. No, not really," Viper replied, with a dazzling grin.

"Suddenly, your inability to get a date when you're not dressed like Jamiroquai makes sense," she remarked.

Viper, far from being insulted, smirked, obviously enjoying some perceived power over her, but Pearce's face was immovable.

"You're saying you're not attracted to this at _all_?" he purred, stepping into her personal bubble. " _Your_ assets are _all_ on show," he said, giving her breasts a pointed look, leaning further in. "Why shouldn't mine be?"

Aaron's eyebrows shot up; across from him Morgan's expression was almost comical; Prentiss and Pearce, however, looked like they'd heard it all before. There was a quiet moment where he was genuinely concerned Pearce might actually shoot the odious little prick, but it passed, and she gave him a revolted look instead.

"Oh, honey. If I want to play with lady parts, I have some of my own," she said, with obvious disgust. "Excuse me."

Aaron's eyes slid to the side as she made quite a dignified exit. He supposed this was probably a better outcome than hitting him. "Effective technique," he remarked, with a poker face, which has an interesting effect on both Morgan and Prentiss's expressions.

"What club were you at last night?" Prentiss asked.

Viper didn't answer, instead raking his eyes over Prentiss's body again.

"It's a legitimate question," Morgan added, clearly feeling the harassment of his colleagues had gone far enough. "You seem to know a lot about our investigation."

Viper glared at him. "Two things to learn about me. First, I outwit alpha males like you for fun and sometimes profit. How often do you have to rely on your badge to score, baldy?"

 _Baldy?_

Clearly Viper's real problem was with successful men, not just with women.

"Second, last night I was at Club Aqua and I have a stack of tax deductible receipts to back up my story. Now, you might not wanna believe that my style works," he said, looking right at Aaron, "and here in this harsh light, you have the advantage."

Smiling arrogantly, he took a step closer to Prentiss, who leaned backwards slightly. "But meet me on my turf?" He chuckled. "Hah! The things I could make you do…" He shook his head, imagining God only knew what.

Prentiss, obviously now the star of these fantasies, made a gagging noise.

They weren't going to get anything useful here.

"If you have any questions, give us a call," Aaron told him, giving Viper his card.

He took it, but didn't take his eyes off Prentiss.

They leave, Morgan bringing up the rear so he could stare the bastard down for creeping out his friends.

" _Please_ tell me we are not giving up on that guy," Prentiss demanded, disgusted.

"Oh, we're just getting started," he assured her.

They walked out into the light and discovered Pearce chatting amiably with a few of Viper's clients, telling them that the whole dating thing wasn't a game at all. Aaron chuckled. Lecturing people on 'it' being all about respect, and that nightclubs aren't the best place for that was definitely better than her punching someone.

0o0

Aaron walked briskly along the corridor, reassuring his technical analyst that not every guy was as bad as Viper. After their brief window into the man's deviant soul, he'd felt the need to vent, and Garcia had called at exactly the wrong – or right – moment. You could always count on her to cheer you up mid-case.

" _He – he actually said that? To Prentiss and Pearce?"_

"Yes, he did," Aaron told her. "So, what can you tell me about him?"

" _I can tell you that 'Viper's' real name is Paul Thomas, and before he rechristened himself he had a major mullet going on."_

"Garcia, we need the names of all of his students," Aaron reminded her.

She made a noise, which he correctly interpreted as 'that's going to take a while'. _"I'm gonna need a couple of hours for a workaround,"_ she told him.

"I also want you to send Reid everything about what this guy teaches," Aaron added. "We think the unsub's using one of his routines. We need to start building a linguistic profile."

Garcia made a noise of assent, obviously already looking at a few of the course materials. _"Uh, sir? Does this guy's stuff actually work? On real, breathing girls?"_

Aaron smiled and shook his head, though she couldn't see it. "Why are you asking me?"

He imagined Garcia pulling a face. _"I abhor the whole 'chicks dig jerks' thing."_

"Well, fortunately Garcia, you're one of the exceptions," he assured her.

" _Aww, well,"_ Garcia said, and he could hear the grin in her voice, _"be still my bespeckled heart. So are you, sir."_

Aaron chuckled. "Thanks."

0o0

Dave led the nervous looking woman through the Police Department. He'd been lurking around the coffee machine beside the reception desk when she'd arrived, and quietly told the man on the desk that she wanted to talk to someone about the Vanessa Holden appeal.

Dave had whisked her away, then, right up to where Aaron was glaring at the board.

"Hotch," he said, catching his friend's attention. "This is Melissa Foster." He gestured to the reluctant, but determined looking woman behind him. "She recognised the sketch."

Aaron raised his eyebrows. "I'm SSA Hotchner, thank you for coming in. You're sure you've seen this man?"

"Yeah," said Melissa. "I gave him the scar."

Dave exchanged a speaking look with Aaron, before both men gently escorted her to a side room, supplying her with a cup of tea and allowing her to settle before continuing what was obviously a distressing conversation.

"Did you meet him in a club?" Aaron asked, watching her expression carefully.

"No," she said, looking uncomfortable. "I was a prostitute." She paused, and took a sip of her tea before continuing. "This happened about a year ago. I was in bad shape…"

"Heroin?" Dave guessed.

She nodded, not meeting their eyes.

"But you got clean?" Aaron prompted, encouragingly.

She nodded again, more emphatically, and managed to look up. "My girl Sheryl told me if I put an ad in the paper it'd be safer than walkin' the streets, so…"

"One day you got a call, right?" Dave asked, helping her along. "To meet you at a hotel?"

Melissa looked at him, taken aback. "Yeah."

"And once you walked in, you knew you were in trouble."

She looked down, nodding again.

"He couldn't meet your eye," Dave continued. "He was, um… kind of shifty, maybe?"

"He paced," she told them, remembering. "I spent the first half hour tryin' to get him to relax, 'cause if he can relax, then I can relax – but he just wanted to rant."

Aaron frowned. "What did he say?"

She looked at him, clearly unimpressed with the words that were burned into her memory. "He said I was 'the help'. That they didn't even see me. That I was nothing. I got customers like this all the time. They work out one of two ways – either they wanna tie you up and you say no, or they wanna be tied up, in which case… you do it, and – uh – you steal their wallet."

She looked embarrassed, but Dave didn't have a problem with that – she was doing what she had to in order to survive.

"He didn't wanna tie you up, did he?" he asked, instead.

Melissa shook her head, obviously distressed. "No," she gulped. "He – pushed me against the wall and got out this flip knife, so I smacked him as hard as I could – I picked up an ashtray from somewhere, and it split his head open above the right eye. I didn't have time to run. He stabbed me in the stomach."

She swallowed a couple of times, as if her mouth was particularly dry.

"You know what I remember – about the whole thing? Crystal clear. It wasn't the pain that sent him running," she said, staring at the table.

"It was the mess," Aaron finished.

Melissa nodded, haunted.

"There's no record of your attack," Dave observed, consulting his notes. "Police, hospital, nothing. Why didn't you come forward?"

"I – wasn't ready to kick it yet," Melissa admitted. "I was this close to dyin' – for two weeks. And when I got back on my feet I realised…" She trailed off, looking away.

"You just didn't wanna live like that anymore," Aaron observed gently.

She gave a hollow laugh. "If he hadn't attacked me, I would've ODed. He saved my life."


	17. Predators and Prey

**Essential listening: Feelings, by Maroon 5**

0o0

As soon as they'd got enough detail, Detective Harding had called in the troops for a profile. If they were right about Becky Williams' death representing an incomplete ritual for this bastard then they needed all hands on deck – and everyone not on patrol inside a club, keeping their eyes peeled.

The thin blue line of Atlanta were spread out around the room, all poised to take notes, looking expectant. At a nod from Hotch, Prentiss kicked things off.

"Our unsub is a confident alpha male," she began. "He's white, he's between the ages of twenty-five and thirty. He's also in excellent shape – to overpower women and also to feed his self-image."

"He has an obsession with cleaning," Dave continued. "He probably works in some service industry, wiping up after others, convinced everyone looks down on him. His change – in himself, and his victimology – reflects that."

"This is the kind of guy who wants to stand out in the crowd," Morgan expanded. "He's taken a class in how to pick up women. He'll repeat a series of well-rehearsed lines and mind games."

"He may be uneducated, but he's by no means stupid," Hotch warned them. "Taking this class has given him the ability to read verbal cues and body language."

"He'll come off as a total ass," Grace added. "He's working the whole 'chicks dig jerks' thing – and he's got the confidence and flair to back it up."

"Uh, one classic routine that Viper promotes is called the push-pull," said Reid, moving towards Jordan Todd. "He'll insert himself between two women and immediately after complimenting one, he'll deliver a subtle insult, then pay attention to the other." He looked at Todd, as if distracted. "Those are really nice earrings, I like those."

She smiled, flattered, and touched her ear. "Thanks."

"My grandmother wears a lot of fake jewellery, also," he added, and the room broke out in laughter. "Ignoring the one woman puts her in direct competition with her friend and causes the other to pursue more aggressively," he explained, before turning awkwardly back to Todd. "I was just demonstrating. Sorry…"

She nodded, her expression suggesting that she felt she ought to have seen that one coming, but laughed along with the rest.

Grace watched Reid for a moment; he was obviously a little embarrassed at having wound up a colleague in front of the room, but the he'd delivered the line and accompanying body language perfectly. She averted her gaze, finding it weird that he couldn't do that when he actually wanted to flirt. He was so confident when presenting a profile, or interrogating a suspect. It just all fell apart as soon as it had nothing to do with work.

Detective Harding addressed the room. "We've mapped the hotspots and he frequents the same clubs as Viper does, so we need eyes and ears in every single one."

"Circulate the sketch as widely as possible," Hotch instructed. "We need everyone aware that there's a killer out there. Thank you very much."

Everyone folded up their notebooks and started to head out. At the front of the room, the team went into a huddle.

"Yeah, I think I might just stay home and man the tip line tonight," Reid said hopefully. "Clubs aren't really my thing…"

"Not a chance, kid – I need a wing man," Morgan insisted. "C'mon."

Grace smirked at the look of mild distress on his face.

"Actually, there is another angle we need to pursue," Rossi said, and Hotch nodded.

"We still don't know what made the unsub change his victimology," their unit chief agreed. "What made him stop killing prostitutes and start moving to the clubs."

"The answer might be something in Viper's class," Rossi proposed, "but to figure that out we need to profile the teacher…"

Grace narrowed her eyes – his tone was shifting to persuasive; she wasn't sure she liked where this was going.

"We have to bait him then, with someone he sees as a challenge," Morgan added, as if he and Rossi had somehow mind-melded.

"We need to study his style, up close and personal," said Reid, amused. "Take someone that he's already attracted to…"

All four of the men were staring at Grace and Prentiss now, in varying degrees of seriousness. Morgan and Reid were both smirking.

"Don't look at me," Grace protested. "I already told him to fuck off once, I don't think he'll try again."

It was a pretty good idea, though. Feeling a bit of a traitor, she, too, looked at Prentiss, who cottoned on, groaning.

"Oh…" She looked at Hotch, who nodded apologetically. "Oh, this is really gonna _suck_."

0o0

Emily took her watch off, dropping it on the shelf in the spare locker the Atlanta P.D. had graciously lent her. After discovering that her whole team had it in for her, she'd been back to the hotel and grabbed a dress she'd packed in case they ended up with some free time at their disposal – you never knew, with their line of work.

She sighed.

This was a necessary evil. And no matter how funny Morgan and Reid thought it was, she knew she could ensure their payback would be an absolute bitch. She put the finishing touches to her makeup and looked up when someone knocked on the door.

"Prentiss?"

"Yeah, come on in."

Taking her earrings off, she smiled at her boss. "Hey, I'm ten minutes away," she assured Hotch as he stuck his head around the door.

He looked awkward, kind of like a dad checking on a teenage daughter before prom night. But this wasn't prom night, and no one here was a teenager.

"You're okay with this, right?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm fine." She chuckled. Even if it meant spending time with Viper, if this got them closer to their unsub, she had no problem with it. Apart from anything else, if you came right down to it, she would still be armed. "Sadly, I've actually dated people worse than Viper."

Hotch raised his eyebrows, clearly struggling to imagine that. "Wow."

Emily smiled, glad he had an opinion of her that precluded some of her poorer life choices; she bit her lip. "Is… something going on with Jordan?" she asked.

Hotch's face changed immediately, becoming the federal mask she was used to seeing on bad days.

 _Uh oh…_

"You asked me to keep an eye on her and – uh – frankly, I've noticed some tension."

"I caught her in a lie," Hotch explained darkly. "She cut a corner to get us in with the Holden family."

Emily shook her head. It was bad – particularly in front of Hotch – and confirmed what Morgan had told her earlier in the day. It was the kind of thing he would never sanction. "Did she misrepresent the bureau?" she asked.

Hotch raised an eyebrow again. "She misrepresented herself."

"Huh" Emily mused, putting her everyday jewellery into the locker. "So, how long is she going to be in the doghouse?"

"Until she proves she's competent," Hotch responded pointedly. He didn't like discussing stuff like this, and Emily didn't blame him, but he had asked her to look out for Todd, and in her mind, sticking up for her was part of that.

She grimaced. "That's gonna be tricky if you're scrutinizing her every move."

He fixed her with a thoughtful stare. "Prentiss, you seemed to do okay."

She shook her head, dismissively. She'd had training for this; Jordan had not. "I think if you want Jordan to prove she's good at this job, it's not going to happen under a magnifying glass," Emily told him. "You're gonna have to give her the opportunity."

Hotch nodded, briskly. "You have something in mind," he guessed.

0o0

The club was heaving, even relatively early in the evening. Everyone was dressed to impress, so the agents combing the crowd looked particularly out of place, but none more so – as always in a place like this – than Reid.

Derek handed the last of his flyers out to a group of women who weren't entirely listening to him, and tried not to eavesdrop on his friend. God he was bad at talking to people.

"When you think about the tenor of serial crimes, it's amazing there aren't more predators in clubs," Reid was saying. "I mean, excessive amounts of alcohol, countless opportunities for date rape drugs. Not to mention surprisingly risky behaviour being pursued. Alright, so who wants a flyer?"

The women Reid had been speaking to walked away, laughing at him; Derek didn't even need to turn around to guess at the kid's expression.

Clubs really weren't his thing.

"Nobody? Okay. Alright…"

He turned to find the kid heading towards him and tried to look like he hadn't been keeping an eye on him. Since his fight with Pearce a couple of weeks before he'd been surly and difficult, and he'd only just started coming back to the happy-go-lucky scamp he had always been. He was still very quiet, however, and he was avoiding Pearce like the plague.

Derek felt for him. Hell, he felt for them both. He'd have liked to knock their heads together, if he agreed with that sort of thing, or believed it would help.

"So, how's it goin'?" Derek asked, not really needing a response.

"Not good," Reid complained. "I gave the profile to one woman, she asked if _I_ was the unsub. How are you doing?"

"Oh, I gave out all my flyers," Derek said, brushing that off.

The kid's expression shifted to something more knowing. "How many phone numbers did you get?"

"None," Derek told him. "I'm workin' a case here, kid."

Reid's eyebrows disappeared into his fringe and he gave him a look that was plainly disbelieving, but also highly amused.

Pleased to see him smiling, Derek grinned. "Okay, four were offered, but I didn't take any of them."

Reid stared, baffled, as ever, at how anyone managed to get female attention. He'd been doing pretty well with Pearce, but Derek figured that was over with now. He decided to help the kid out.

"Okay, let me school you, real quick," Derek told him. "What you have to do with these ladies – just take control of the conversation."

Reid was nodding, but Derek wasn't sure if that was because he understood, or because he wanted him to shut up.

"When you're talkin', what makes you feel like an expert?"

"Uh, statistics," said Reid, with some confidence.

"No. Trust me. No," Derek told him, unequivocally. "Somethin' else."

The kid frowned, thinking. "Uh… when I – when I do magic."

"See, that's perfect," Derek told him and Reid smiled, relieved. "Chicks dig magic."

The sudden twist to Reid's expression suggested that this had not hitherto been his experience, but Derek suspected that had more been in his friend's salesmanship, rather than the magic itself.

Derek looked around before he lost his student. "I'm gonna give you a chance to work it," he said, spotting the pretty brunette working the bar. He ushered Reid over and spoke to her. "Uh, excuse me sweetheart? Whenever you get a chance."

The bartender nodded, finished up a drinks order and gave them what attention could be had in a loud club on a weekend. "Hi, what can I get you?"

"Hi, we're with the – uh – FBI," Reid said, showing his badge. "We're looking for this man – passes a flyer – does he look at all familiar to you?"

"Well, it's not much of a picture," the bartender remarked, arching her brow.

"I – I know," Reid admitted, reaching into his bag. Derek patted him on the shoulder and went to lurk somewhere unobtrusive, where he could keep an eye on things.

"I'll tell you what might help, actually," said Reid. "Is, um, he has a scar." He took the picture back. "On his eye, right about there." He stabbed the pen through the paper, letting her see both sides of it, almost accidentally. "Um, we also know that he's taken classes where he's learned to distract –" He dragged the pen through the paper without leaving a mark, "– and charm his victims." To finish, he pulled the pen back out with a flourish.

The bartender laughed, entertained. She looked at the paper, flipping it over to see both sides, unmarked. "Okay, how did you do that?"

"That's – uh – that's privileged information," said Reid, smirking.

"Huh?"

He nodded, giving an apologetic shrug.

"So what do I do if I see him?" she asked, clearly of the correct opinion that Reid didn't know what to do next.

"Uh, you should call us," Reid. "Uh, even if you think you see him, you should definitely call us."

"And if I don't see him?"

Reid looked confused.

"Can I still call you?"

The kid nodded. "Yeah," he said, surprised. "Yeah, you can call me – if you want."

"Okay cool. Wait –" she called as Reid walked away. "I don't have your number!"

"Um, it's behind your barette," he said, with more cool than Derek had known he possessed.

The bartender reached up and pulled his card out of her hair, astonished.

 _Nice,_ thought Derek, impressed.

"Bye," said Reid, and gave her a little wave before hurrying over to where Derek was waiting for him.

He clapped him on the shoulder, proud of him. "See, there you go – _that's_ what I'm talkin' about. That's called _game."_

They walked out together, like two guys who did this all the time, Reid grinning from ear to ear.

0o0

Grace looked up when Morgan and Reid came out of the club. She had been working the line outside, handing out flyers to all the women and any men that didn't fit their profile or description. She was about to fall in with the boys and ask how it had gone inside, but Morgan was obviously waxing lyrical about something and she didn't want to interrupt.

"That was smooth, man!" he said, an arm thrown across Reid's shoulders. "She was so into you!"

Reid, who was grinning like the cat who'd got the cream, nodded. "She was really pretty…"

It hit her like a punch to the gut.

Reid – Spencer Reid, _her_ Reid – had been flirting with a woman, a really pretty woman. Successfully.

Grace let them pass, taken aback by how strongly abandoned that information made her feel. She swallowed, feeling suddenly dizzy. Even though they were far from friends, she had thought – what?

That he was still, somehow tied to her?

She scoffed at her own stupidity. Of course he could flirt with someone else. They weren't going out, and she had given him reason enough never to speak to her again – as he had her. But that moment in JJ's kitchen must have lulled her into a fault sense of security – one she hadn't even examined. Having assumed there was nothing more between them, she'd had no reason to.

The reality of Reid liking – and being liked by – someone else made her feel sick, angry, jealous and strangely disconnected. It was unfamiliar and unpleasant, and wholly unexpected.

Wishing that she'd taken up the challenge and gone with Emily to try to charm Viper, where she might never have found out about Reid's pretty bartender, she fell in behind them, but they didn't notice.

Rattled, she let Morgan continue ribbing Reid all the way to the next club, which the boys went into without noticing her at all, as if she'd been completely forgotten.

Annoyed, and even more so because of her wounded pride, she started working the line outside.

0o0

Emily stalked through the hot bar finally spotting Viper and his little crowd of students lurking in the middle, where he was giving them tips before sending them out, like dating sharks. She sighed, plucking up her patience. The man was less Jamiroquai tonight and more extra from _Buffy the Vampire Slayer_.

"That's an excellent question," Viper congratulated. "Once you know a chick is interested, how do you proceed?" Emily let him see her and he got a cat-like grin on his face. He chuckled, sending her what he obviously thought was a smouldering look. "Allow me to demonstrate," he said, and smarmed his way over.

She grimaced, steeling herself.

Viper chuckled. "Well, this is a nice surprise," he commented, dipping his finger in his drink and sucking it.

Emily resisted the urge to gag. "Well, the Atlanta P.D. and the FBI are combing all the bars you go to and it looks like I've pulled the short straw."

"Lucky me then," he beamed.

"So, why do you do it?" she asked, playing with her hair. "Why do you teach guys how to be somebody they're not?"

"Because it's a game," he admitted. "One I'm good at. And I wanna help other guys get good at it, too."

She thought about this. "So affection, sex, emotional commitment, that's all just for fun, huh?"

"No, the fun is in the initial spark," Viper informed her. "It's that thing a guy does in the first five seconds that makes you go _him,_ " he said, clicking his fingers in front of her face. "What you're talking about is a different beast." He leaned into her body space, making her uncomfortable. "You can't fake it – you have to want it."

Emily nodded.

"Now," he said, with a pirate grin. "Why are you really here?"

He moved to kiss her, but Emily beamed, knowing Jordan Todd was about three feet behind her and waiting for this very cue. Viper looked up, distracted, as she approached.

"Is, um, this the guy you were telling me about?" she asked, joining their table.

Emily nodded. "Uh, Viper, meet SSA Jordan Todd of the BAU. Jordan, this is Viper, God's gift to women."

He backed up a little, perhaps recognising that he'd been outplayed for the moment. He accepted the unintended compliment thought, and preened.

"Wow," Jordan laughed, looking at his extraordinary choice of clothes. "God sure has a sense of humour."

"Hah," he exclaimed, admitting momentary defeat. He looked annoyed. "You brought a friend."

Emily grinned. "You promised that if I met you on your own turf you'd show me something special, so – let's see it."

Viper shifted his body language, belatedly realising this wasn't about Emily hitting on him – it was about them playing a game. But that's okay, he likes games.

"Yeah, Viper, who gets pushed and who gets pulled?" Jordan asked.

Emily watched as he decided that he could beat these two annoying women; she smiled. They'd got him.

0o0

Aaron was staring at the map of pick-ups and murders when Dave came in.

The boss looked pensive today, he reflected. Dave couldn't blame him. It was a ticking clock until their unsub abducted someone new, now. The only thing they could hope was that someone would recognise him from the flyers, but that was a slim chance.

"Is this the one that if you stare at it long enough, you see the image of a swan?" Dave asked, cracking a bad joke to break the tension.

"I'm just wondering if we missed anything," Aaron told him.

"Remember I said there was a secondary trigger?" David reminded him. "We never found it."

Aaron agreed, annoyed. He looked away. "Maybe it's something that came from the class – Prentiss could still –"

"What he took from the class brought him to Vanessa Holden," Dave interrupted. "But I'm talking about something much deeper. Psychologically. Think about this," he said, when Aaron glanced at him again. "This unsub always goes to his victim's apartments. Never his own place. Why is that?"

"Well, there must be some restriction there," Aaron theorised.

"A nagging girlfriend, a crying baby, maybe," David guessed. "Some reminder of how miserable his life is."

"Which he's taking out on his victims," Aaron added darkly.

0o0

"You see, eye contact is a very powerful gauge," Viper purred, staring into Jordan's eyes. "It's why you tend to look away from someone you're attracted to, because you know _instinctively_ what a dead giveaway it is, but your brain goes there anyway. Images," he said, grinning and nodding, as if he'd guessed what was on her mind. "Fantasies."

Jordan, who had been using the time to mentally itemise the jobs she needed to do when she got back to the office, smirked. "Don't flatter yourself."

"The eyes don't lie," Viper informed her. "They dilate – it's a chemical response we can't control."

"Okay, fifteen seconds," Prentiss interrupted, as promised. Obediently, Jordan turned to her and let her examined her eyes.

"What do you see?"

"Nope. No change, no dilation."

"I guess chemically we're not a match," Jordan said to Viper, who threw up a hand in mock defeat.

Jordan was grateful that Prentiss had talked SSA Hotchner into letting her out in the field. Although her dressing down had been unexpected, the other members of the team had pressed upon her the gravity of her mistake. She badly needed a chance to prove herself.

Besides, it was kind of fun.

"It's only because you have someone else on the mind," said Viper, dismissively. "Once that happens, the attraction centre in the brain shuts down. Like that angry blonde you had with you earlier," Viper said, leering at Prentiss instead.

Jordan frowned at that. Presumably, Viper meant Agent Pearce. Assuming this wasn't all 100% bullshit, she wondered who she had a thing for. Pearce seemed reasonably cheerful and reasonably friendly with everyone – though she had been quieter, lately, Jordan had to admit. It had taken her a while to settle in properly, and by the time she had, she was aware she had probably missed a few things.

Perhaps Viper was right about that, at least.

"Your turn," Viper teased.

"No," said Emily.

Viper laughed. "Are you scared I might be right?"

Emily laughed too, making him think he had her. "No, Paul, I'm baffled. I cannot figure out what the unsub could have learned from you."

Jordan could see that Viper's button had been well and truly pushed as soon as she finished speaking.

"What do you mean?" he asked, affronted. "He took my look, my words – everything that makes me successful to the opposite sex!"

Both women openly winced.

"Really?" Jordan prodded, as Prentiss shook her head. "Because that guy could get beautiful women into his apartment – I wouldn't let you on my Facebook page."

"Ooh, you're on Facebook?" Emily repeated suddenly, as if Viper was the least important person in the room, pushing him that little bit further.

"Yeah, you should friend me!" Jordan grinned, playing along.

"I will!"

"Hey, hey, hey!" Viper interrupted, annoyed at their lack of attention. "I gave him the routines that made him what he is."

Prentiss looked doubtful. "It must all be in the salesmanship then…"

"Because we've been watching all the women in the club," Jordan added, following the other woman's thread.

"And not one of them has looked at you," Prentiss finished brutally. "So who do you really go home with, Paul? Or –" It was Prentiss' turn to pause for effect. "Or do you go home alone?"

That touched a nerve and they can both see it. He looked away and when he looked back he was all bluster and arrogance again, pretending to laugh at them. "Oh, that was really good, ladies. That was really good. Don't you think I know why you're here? One of my students copies my moves and you're here to get inside my mind. Don't you see? I confronted my Queen B a long time ago."

Jordan frowned. "What's a Queen B?"

" _You_ are," Viper snapped. "And so is every other confident girl in here, who's loud when she's drunk."

"The social butterfly," Emily realised, understanding. "The alpha female."

"Every student who's ever taken my class has had one in his life," Viper told them, angry now. "And the first exercise my students have to complete is to confront their Queen B."

Jordan shared a speaking look with Emily Prentiss.

"It could be the girl who cheated on you, or the prom date who stood you up," Viper continued, oblivious. "But you find them, and you squash them!"

As one, the two women picked up their purses and left without a word. That was all they needed.

Prentiss dialled Hotchner's number and put him on speaker. "Our unsub knew Vanessa Holden," she said, before he could say 'hi'.

"How do you know?" Agent Hotchner asked.

"It's Viper's first confidence building exercise," Jordan explained. "Find the source of your first rejection and make her pay for it."

"That's why he stopped seeing prostitutes," Emily said. "He took Viper's class and decided to confront Vanessa Holden."


	18. The Mirror Cracks

**Essential listening: She Said, She Said, by the Beatles**

0o0

Aaron watched the two women closely, trying to appear as though he was merely being polite.

Mrs Holden was brushing imaginary lint off her trousers; her one remaining daughter looked tired and vulnerable.

"So, what you're saying is that you think my daughter knew her killer?" Mrs Holden clarified.

"It would have been someone that she possibly met at a young age," Aaron explained gently. "Maybe a boyfriend, someone she rejected."

Ashleigh shook her head. "No – Vanessa told me about all her boyfriends."

"How about someone who expressed himself sexually to Vanessa?" Dave asked. "It would have been awkward, embarrassing."

"And he would have had issues with cleanliness, or cleaning," Aaron added.

After a few moments of frowning, trying to recall, Mrs Holden gasped and looked at him.

"What is it?" Aaron asked.

"That woman who used to clean for us!" Ashleigh said suddenly, horrified. "The one who brought her son."

"Who was she?" Dave asked.

Mrs Holden grimaced. "I don't remember her name! There've been so many people through this house, but… I remember once she brought this young boy and he was _odd."_

"How?"

"He was inappropriate – he would hide in the closet and then… watch. I caught him one day with Vanessa in the bathroom. They were in their underwear and he was touching her…"

"What did you do?" Aaron asked, concerned.

She closed her eyes for a moment, obviously uncomfortable about it – but whether that was because she felt guilty, or because she suspected others might expect her to, he wasn't sure.

"I did what any parent would do," she told them. "I took him to the kitchen and I smacked him. He had to understand what he did was wrong!"

"Mom!" Ashleigh admonished, appalled.

"Oh, don't 'Mom' me! That boy had no sense of boundaries, whatsoever! He needed to be taught a lesson!"

Ashleigh looked away, disgusted.

"Do you happen to have any records of this employee, the mother?" Aaron asked, trying to keep things moving.

He suspected that Ashleigh Holden was already putting two and two together; the rejection and the humiliation of being caught with Vanessa, then being beaten in front of her was likely a large part of what had made him into a murderer.

"No. Everyone got paid in cash," Mrs Holden explained, touchily.

"Bobby," said Ashleigh. "His name was Bobby. Vanessa called him a pervert."

"I fired the mother that day," Mrs Holden said, as if that was the worst thing that could have happened to her. "It was awful."

Aaron reflected that it was a good deal more awful now.

"But there's a service that I remember – that I used to get my domestics from. It was in…" she paused, trying to remember. "Fulton County."

0o0

"Last call people, last call!" Austin shouted, coming back out into the bar.

She stowed a couple of bottles beneath the bar. Her ears pricked up when she overheard a guy flirting strongly with a blonde in a green dress. Ordinarily, this might have gone entirely unnoticed, but the cute FBI agent who'd been so charming with his magic tricks had made her hyperaware. Intrigued, she moved closer, busying herself with bar things. She had learned, early on in her career, that nobody paid any attention at all to someone doing a recognisable, expected job.

She had commented on it to her elderly great uncle, who had immediately lent her half a dozen Agatha Christie novels that he'd said were along the same theme, but she had yet to get around to reading them. Now, Austin felt they ought to be higher up her reading list.

Something about this guy's body language is off. It's too engaged, somehow; too intense, but not enough that a potential victim might notice.

Moving to a part of the bar with a better view, she wondered when she had begun to think in terms of victims; she thought again of the handsome FBI agent and smiled. The smile evaporated the moment she got a good look at the overly confident flirt. It was him – the guy from the sketch! Even the scar was the same!

Hearing the immortal words 'Let's get out of here', Austin realised the pair were about to leave together and she decided to take action; her heart running a million miles an hour, she cast about for something – anything – to interrupt their exit.

Thinking quickly, she filled a glass with ice and water, and tipped it all over the woman, who is (not unnaturally) pissed. "Hey!" she shouted. "What the hell?"

"I'm so sorry!" Austin lied. This was a matter of life and death, after all.

"Hey," the woman said to the pushy guy, who had grabbed her arm when she began to move away. "You're holding onto me kinda tight!"

"We're leaving!" he ordered.

The blonde was in obvious distress now, so Austin gave her a bright, apologetic smile. "Hey, you know what? I have some club soda in the back if you wanna clean that up?"

The woman glanced at her, tearing her eyes from the face of the man who had seemed such a good prospect a few moments before. She'd clocked something was off now, possibly realising that Austin's interruption had been intentional. "Yeah," she said. "Why don't you let me do that?"

She slipped through the bar, her pursuer glaring daggers at Austin. But who cared about a thing like that? As long as she'd removed his victim, she could call the FBI guy and he'd sort it all out.

Austin followed the woman into the back. "Just – uh – right back here," she said, shutting the door behind them. "I need you to stay right here, okay?"

"Who is that guy?" the woman asked, and because she didn't want to panic her, Austin didn't respond.

She hurried back out, but the guy was nowhere to be seen. Slipping out the back to make a call, she prayed to the dial tone that the FBI agent would pick up quickly. Her phone was on the fourth ring when he grabbed her, punching her in the face.

She didn't even see him coming.

0o0

Spencer followed Morgan out of the back of the club at some speed. It was obviously the employee smoking area, and therefore a low traffic area.

As soon as his phone had gone, he had known something was off, somehow. He had hurried outside the club to take the call, but by the time he'd got there it had already been dead. Pearce had appeared out of nowhere, scaring him out of his skin, with her usual preternatural grace, and – after one look at his face – told him to grab Morgan and started calling Hotch.

By the time he'd found and extracted Morgan from the club, his heart hammering against the inside of his chest, she'd already put a call for assistance through. Together, the three of them ran the length of the block to the club where he'd given his card to the pretty barmaid.

She was nowhere to be found.

"She's not out the front," said Pearce, who had stayed inside long enough to speak to the woman's manager. "But there's a punter in the back who had a close encounter with our unsub. She recognised the sketch."

Spencer gaped at her, appalled.

"The woman said the bartender rescued her." She met Spencer's eyes, looking simultaneously anxious and determined. "Her name's Austin Wheelan."

 _I didn't even know her name. She wouldn't have known about the unsub if it wasn't for me – this is my fault!_

 _I didn't even know her name…_

"No," said Pearce softly, stepping closer as Morgan started searching the street. "Don't do that. This isn't your fault – focus on finding her."

For a second he thought about taking her hand, which had landed on his arm the way it always used to, both familiar and strange, but she dropped it. He wondered how the hell she could have known.

"Well, based on the witness's description, it definitely sounds like the unsub was here," Derek remarked.

"Hotch sent units to Austin's apartment, but she's not there," Pearce added.

Controlling his panic, Spencer hit the call back button on his cell; it rang out. "It's gone straight to voicemail," he announced. "Maybe we could have Garcia try to triangulate where she is based on the cell phone –"

He paused, hearing a buzzing, and looked down. Poking out of the bushes was a phone, obviously still ringing.

 _Well, that's not good._

Spencer gulped. "He has her."

0o0

Todd and Emily were back in the locker room, changing back into normal office clothes.

"When you asked him if he practices his technique on his sex doll?" Jordan reminded her, "I almost lost it."

They both laughed.

"You know, as much as I hate what that guy stands for," Emily remarked, "I still read 'five ways to get noticed' in _Cosmo_ magazine."

"Because it makes sense," Jordan allowed.

Emily scoffed and pulled a face.

"Emily, thanks for doing this," said Jordan seriously.

Emily smiled. "Absolutely."

Hotch – Emily could tell just by the pattern of knocks now - knocked on the wall, but didn't come in. "I need you both out here – the unsub's abducted another victim."

Both women exchanged a worried look and hurried out, still finishing buttoning their shirts and bundling back their hair. They hurried out to meet Rossi, Hotch and Detective Harding, all of whom were gathered by a computer terminal.

"Garcia, you got those attendance records?" Rossi asked.

" _Got 'em. Ready to play the player,"_ she chirped, through the machine.

"Start with Robert, narrow down the permutations – Bob, Bobby," Rossi told her.

" _That gives us twenty-three suspects."_

"You have access to birth records?" Hotch asked.

" _Tch-yeah!"_

"Pull the mothers' names and cross reference with work and home addresses in Fulton County," he suggested.

" _Hold on… Bingo! Robert C Parker, lives at 932 Prior Street!"_

"Prior's five miles from here," said Detective Harding, shaking her head.

Hotch nodded, sensing the urgency. "Let's go. Jordan, have SWAT meet us there."

0o0

Grace pulled on her body armour, plugging in the wire that led to her earpiece with practiced ease. The night air was cool and crisp after the heat of the day, and she allowed it to blow free any lingering cobwebs.

SWAT were assembling by the back of the houses now, silently moving neighbours out of the way or keeping them indoors; with an unsub like this one, you had to make sure if he slipped their grasp, he'd find himself hard pressed to take a hostage.

She took position next to Morgan and Reid, who nodded in unison, the latter looking tenser than usual, but in control, which was what they – and Miss Wheelan – needed.

It didn't matter that Austin was the girl Reid had flirted with at the club; she was in probably fatal trouble, and Grace could help her – if she chose to.

Whatever else she was, Grace would always be a copper at heart.

She squared her shoulders and moved in, following their assigned SWAT cluster into the building. The sound of yelling came from inside; hoping they weren't too late, Grace held her breath, waiting for the signal…

Hotch's voice came through her earpiece, disturbing the still night air. _"First team in position."_

The senior SWAT agent gave the signal and together they burst in, yelling 'FBI!'

In the living room, they found Austin on her knees, sobbing, and the Parker standing over her with a huge knife. Startled, the unsub ran, but Morgan was faster. He leapt on him, bringing them both crashing down through a bead curtain, which rattled and swung around them.

Morgan bellowed, "Stay down! Stay down!"

On the ground, the man screamed and struggled, but no one was paying him any attention.

Reid immediately put his gun away and went to help Austin. He pulled the tape off her mouth and wrists.

"Get it off, get it off!" she cried, gasping in her panic. "He was going to – I called you!"

"I know, I know," he said soothingly, helping her to her feet and out of the apartment.

"Please…"

Grace's head shot around. Over the sound of the hoarsely yelling man on the floor, someone was weakly calling for help. Hotch and Rossi, who had obviously also heard the woman's voice, brought their guns back up and together, the three of them strafed down the corridor that led to the back of the house.

"Please, please!"

Warily, they moved towards the door at the end of the hall.

"Please – I hear you talking – is there somebody out there?"

Responding to the nod from Hotch, Rossi opened the door and jumped through, Hotch close behind, and Grace following after him.

It was a bedroom, furnished modestly and neatly, looking crowded because of the large medical machines clustered around the queen sized bed. At the centre of it all was a small, withered old.

She was crying and scared, and obviously not a threat. Grace checked her gun.

"Who are you? What do you want?" she asked, tremulously.

"Mrs Parker?" Hotch asked, taken aback. He and Rossi lowered their guns.

"Where's Robert? Where's my son?"

"Everything's gonna be okay, we're gonna get you some help," Hotch assured her.

"No, please – I need Robert." She grimaced, humiliated. "I – I need to be changed…"

"He's just outside, ma'am," said Grace, with one eye on the dialysis machines.

She put a call through for one of the paramedics from the ambulance while Rossi and Hotch murmured to one another about a secondary trigger. "It's okay, Mrs Parker," she said gently. "Someone's coming up to help you – Robert's indisposed right now. It's a paramedic and she's fully trained – is that okay with you?"

"I – I suppose so," she said, looking a little calmer.

Grace gave her an anxious smile.

This was going to kill her.

0o0

 _Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely._

 _P. G. O'Rourke_


	19. No Illusions

**Essential listening: Nothing, by Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians**

 **0o0**

Aaron was filling in the report recommending aid for Mrs Parker when Jordan Todd came in.

"My report," she said, passing him a file.

"Thank you," he said, and she turned to go. Emily had been right, he decided. "Jordan – Prentiss said you were excellent in the field. Astute, responsive – you thought well on your feet."

Jordan beamed. "She's being generous – I really enjoyed working with her," she said, genuinely pleased.

"You also posited early on that Vanessa Holden might know the unsub," he added.

"Well, he didn't fit the profile of a sexual sadist," she said.

"And you were right." Aaron gave her a brief, rare smile. "Clearly our unsub was more complicated than the profile. Anyway, I just wanted you to know that – uh – you have the green light again."

Todd smiled again, looking a good deal more relaxed.

"And I trust your judgement."

"Thank you," she said, and left the room looking like she was walking on air.

Aaron watched her go, thoughtfully.

0o0

Finishing the last line of an email, Grace shut down her computer and stretched. It had been a long day, flying back from Atlanta, picking up the pieces Robert Parker had left behind. She had stayed with his ailing, traumatised mother all night at the hospital, until social services had sent someone to speak with her, to break the awful news of her son's arrest and the evidence against him in a safe environment.

She hadn't slept in the jet, either. It was almost as though she was too tired to sleep. All she wanted to do now was get home, run a bath and open a bottle of wine.

Giving Prentiss and Morgan a wave as they departed (probably to a bar, to dissect Emily's adventures with Viper), she started shutting down her computer. There were still reports to review, but they could be done at home.

"Hey, how're you feeling?" said Reid.

Given that they were two of the last people in the bullpen, it took her a moment to realise he wasn't talking to her. He was lounging in his chair, facing away from his computer, grinning. His phone was pressed against his ear.

"Well, I'm glad your stay at hospital wasn't – uh – too miserable, then."

He laughed and she nodded to herself.

 _Austin._

"Oh, right. Hey – back to bar tending."

Grace grimaced unwillingly, and tipped four or five files into her bag, wanting to get out of the office, now, as fast as she could. She didn't want to hear this.

Movement caught her eye and she looked up to find a Fed Ex guy delivering something to Reid, who looked surprised.

"Huh, well that's – uh – that's very exciting news," he said, smiling, signing for the package with the phone wedged between his head and his shoulder. "What's, um, what is the new job path? Magic? Really?" He paused, and then looked down at the package in his hands. "Uh, no…"

He opened it, clearly at Austin's request, and Grace gave up, stuffing her coat into her bag, but she couldn't get away before Reid got to the contents of the envelope.

"What is this?" he asked, amused.

He pulled out a card and flipped it over; Grace caught a good look at it as she hurried past. There was a bright red lipstick kiss on the back. Refusing to look back, and feeling oddly nauseous, she strode towards the lifts, the sound of Reid's laughter following her out of the bullpen.

"Uh, yeah, it is – it is my card."

She glared at her reflection in the mirrored part of the lift, forcing what was clearly jealousy to the very back of her mind.

That part of her life that might have led to her and Reid being together was over now. It just wasn't meant to be.

 _It's done._

0o0

Grace had been trying to read all day, but concentration was eluding her. She'd given up after the fifth read through of the paragraph she was on without taking anything in, and had thrown herself into cleaning instead. This had turned into a proper spring clean (though it was getting towards autumn), which had allowed her mind to be blissfully quiet for a few hours, and now the house was sparkling.

It had been a long time since she'd felt so unequivocally jealous, or so helplessly unable to settle.

 _And why shouldn't he see someone else?_ she thought, savagely, as she turned her attention to the last two boxes she'd had shipped from England and had never got around to unpacking. They contained mostly magical tomes she'd had no need of and oddments from hers and her father's houses, which had been too painful to look at, at the time. _It's not like we're seeing one another – or ever will be._

Still, she couldn't shake the feeling, until she found an old recipe book of her mother's tucked away in one of her dad's old trinket boxes, and was so blindsided by its presence that she nearly forgot all about that business card and the deep, red lipstick kiss on the back of it.

She was still tenderly caressing the faded, slightly anarchic handwriting, when someone knocked on the door. Waking, as if from a dream, she trotted over, without any thought of who it might be, or why she might not want to see them, and opened it to discover JJ on her doorstep, looking a little anxious.

"Hey," she said, her mind instantly going back to the conversation she'd had with Will before the team had set off for Atlanta.

"Hey, uh – you got a minute?"

"Come in. No tiny tap dancer today?" she asked, ushering her friend into her unnaturally clean kitchen.

"No – I'm giving Will a little daddy and baby time," she said, with a slightly pained smile that Grace did not miss.

The corner of her mouth twitched upwards. "The separation anxiety is killing you, isn't it?" she guessed, and JJ grinned.

"Uh, totally! I feel like I'm losing my mind!"

"I'm told it wears off," Grace remarked, and they both laughed.

If there was something not entirely genuine about their laughter, neither commented. Instead, acting on slightly desperate instinct, Grace headed for the kettle.

"Tea? Coffee? I have decaf…"

"Ooh, peppermint tea would be amazing," said JJ, with feeling. "I can't wait to have coffee again."

"Is Henry keeping you up all night?"

"Uh, yeah," JJ snorted. "And just when I think he's gotten into a pattern, it changes, and we're back to square one. I fell asleep standing up yesterday."

Grace winced on her friend's behalf. "How's Will coping?"

"He's amazing! I'm kind of jealous of how easily he seems to go from asleep to awake and back again" JJ admitted. She recounted their first outing as a family while Grace fetched the tea.

She felt oddly calm today, though she was aware the anecdote ought to make her feel wretched. The same old pang was there, but it was duller now, more manageable.

 _Perhaps I'm just numb_ , she thought.

JJ took a sip and smiled. "You know, I used to hate peppermint tea," she said. "But with the nausea, and not being allowed caffeine…"

"There are much worse things to drink," Grace agreed. She, too, had stumbled upon it when she had been pregnant, and she almost said it aloud. Almost.

JJ, with the innate sense of the unspoken that the disparate members of the BAU had, bit her lip. Grace met her eyes and gave her a wan smile. Obviously, they were going to have _that_ talk today, but not yet. It didn't seem like her friend wanted to bring it up, either, because she nodded to the recipe book instead, still lying open on the table.

"Planning on some baking?" she asked, with a slightly over-bright smile. "I know if you take it to work you'll have devoted friends for life."

Grace laughed. "No – well, maybe. I had a bit of a spring clean. Wrong time of the year, I know." She explained how she had found it, in a plain wooden box that had always rested on the shelf beside her father's desk.

"He must have kept it for years, and I never knew…" Smiling slightly, she traced the familiar lines of her mother's words.

"When did she die?" JJ asked, gently.

"When I was six. Sometimes I can't even remember her face, you know? Or her voice… I haven't seen her handwriting in years." She looked up at her friend and couldn't help but smile. "I'm glad I did. It's like she knew I needed her."

She realised JJ was studying her face a little more closely and chuckled. "I'm being silly, of course. Some things are simple coincidence – but it's nice to acknowledge the stories we tell ourselves, at times."

She watched JJ play with the rim of her teacup for a moment.

"Grace, uh…"

 _Here it comes_ , she thought.

"Will told you," she guessed.

"Yes," JJ replied, sadly. "But I kinda already knew."

Grace nodded. She'd had her suspicions – but who wanted to broach that subject?

"You know we're here for you?" JJ asked, looking for a moment, the very mirror of her earnest partner.

She met her friend's eyes, which JJ took as the painful agreement that it was.

"What happened?"

Grace sighed. "It was in the line of duty," she said, though it seemed to her the words belonged to someone else. "I shouldn't have been there. I was on maternity leave, when –" She stopped. Thought better of finishing that particular sentence, and changed gear. "It was an assault. A really bad assault. I was unconscious for a fortnight, and when I woke up –" She gestured helplessly with her hand. "He was gone."

"Oh Grace, I am so sorry."

She gave a little shake of her head. "It's okay. It's – it's not something I've ever been able to talk about, really." She blinked, but the rush of tears she had been expecting did not come. "Well, there it is."

"I can't imagine how hard it must be," JJ reflected, softly. "And the cases we do with young kids…"

Grace nodded, still a little surprised that despite the ache that never truly left her at her son's absence, she was kind of okay. "Some days are harder than others," she admitted.

JJ nodded too, looking down for a moment. "If you ever need to talk," she began, and Grace chuckled.

"You and Will are perfect for one another, by the way," she remarked, and JJ laughed.

"I'll take it he made the same offer."

"Yeah. And both are very much appreciated, even if I don't know if I can ever take you up on it."

JJ gave her a painful smile before frowning again. "Did – did they catch the guy? Who…"

"Yes," said Grace, guessing the direction of her thoughts.

"Good. That's – uh – good."

There was a moment of pensive silence, but it wasn't nearly as strained as it could have been, considering.

"So, how's work?" JJ asked, breaking the spell.

Grace shrugged. "Same old, same old," she told her. "There was a proper creeper in Atlanta – and he wasn't even the unsub."

JJ laughed. "Yeah, Emily told me about Viper. Wish I could have seen the look on his face when you told him where to get off."

"You should have seen Morgan – I thought he was going to bludgeon him to death with his own hat!"

They spent a pleasant few minutes dissecting the inability of people like Viper to view others as human beings, before JJ asked how Todd was getting on.

Grace paused before answering, then grimaced, which made JJ laugh even harder. "That bad, huh?"

Grace opened her mouth to respond, closed it again, and then said, "She's a good agent. She just needs a little more time to get grounded."

"Is my office going to be in one piece when I get back?" JJ asked, mildly concerned.

"Hah – yes, I should think so. Don't worry, everyone else thinks she'd great – I just…" She pursed her lips, wondering how best to put it. "She reminds me of me, six years ago," she decided. "Committed, hard-working, over confident, very ambitious, a little reckless and a bit too apt to cut corners where she oughtn't."

It was her turn to laugh, on the look JJ sent her. "I won't speak further ill of her," she said, hurriedly. "Ask Hotch."

"I will," JJ agreed, and Grace smiled at the image of their boss being grilled unexpectedly over coffee somewhere.

"I just don't like her," Grace admitted. "And I feel kind of bad about it, because she's obviously a nice person, but…" She gave an eloquent shrug. "I'm trying not to make her feel awkward."

"Speaking of awkward," said JJ, and Grace saw her eyes narrow slightly.

 _Uh oh…_

"You and Spence…"

Grace turned away, looking out over her back garden and the banks of vegetables he'd reluctantly helped her plant nearly ten months before.

"Are you guys okay?"

0o0

 **Another run finished! And what a run – interrupted by silly real life, panto (Oh no it wasn't! Oh yes it was!) and such.**

 **I have to thank my awesome reviewers – you guys keep me going when I consider packing it all in! Enormous thanks to my fabulous regulars, Evanescencefan97, gossamermouse101, RedDragon395, Beckswim21, ahowell1993, tannerose5, LeopardFeather and, of course, MuggleCreator, who is in my corner on and off ffnet :) You don't know how much you guys do for my writing!**

 **Also to Music4ever19, AyarosReadman, Giulia, goldeneyes123, , Ann, J. , Donny Donowitz and ChilliLemons, who have all contributed to the awesome of late!**

 **An honourable mention needs to go to The Glitterati for stopping me going mad and helping patch up plot holes, and to Jess-ter and Bones for reading bits through and telling me if they sound okay – love you all!**

 **And a big thank you to all the regulars who've put up with my having to have breaks this time. There's another one coming before the series kicks off again, but it's pretty unavoidable, since I'm about to get married and I need to focus on that instead for a couple of weeks ;) The mayhem properly begins this weekend, so it'll be a whole month of stuff to fit the writing around o.o**

 **I should be back on Friday the 23** **rd** **of July, so if you want to make sure you catch my next fic, hit the 'follow author' button at the bottom of the page.**

 **I've also got another fic restarting that week, if you're into Hogwarts related chaos, called** _ **The Coming Storm,**_ **and the next instalment of that is due for release on the 21** **st** **of July. Meanwhile, I'm working on getting two of my books and an anthology published, so it's all go on the writing front.**

 **You can find my books, incidentally, over at the website with an address that has laurenknixon and a dot and a com :) I also have an author page on facebook if you fancy stopping by (the one with the mad purple-haired person on it) under the same name.**

 **Until the next, dear friends!**

 **Love and pickles,**

 **Parlanchina xx**


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